


Hostile Takeover

by baixue88



Category: Far Cry 4
Genre: Affairs, Eventual Smut, Extramarital Affairs, F/M, Falling In Love, Intrigue, Seduction, Smut, Spies & Secret Agents, Spoilers, Subterfuge, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-02-27 15:41:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 25,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2698292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baixue88/pseuds/baixue88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles chronicling the romance between the dictator and the spy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers ahead!
> 
> According to Far Cry 4, Ajay was born November 1988 and Lakshmana in the same year. However, it would be absolutely impossible, if Ajay is the elder, for the two to be born in such close sequence. For the purpose of this fic, Ajay was born November 1987 and Lakshmana in 1988.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She arrives.

He is exiling her.

Mohan, beloved husband, father of her son, is exiling her.

He says he is finally letting Ishwari have her way, but it’s obvious enough why he’s doing this. He wants her to stop whining, to stop questioning his authority, to stop demanding to be let in on the action. She is Tarun Matara, a living icon, not a co-leader.

She is pawn, not queen, and now she is being placed away from her husband, away from her son, away from her people.

She did not even ask if she could bring Ajay along. It would have been useless. Without Ajay, Mohan has no means to keep control over her ever-more-rebellious ways.

There is no baby boy on her back as she hikes towards the fortress. There is only lightness where there should be squirming, cooing weight. Her breasts are aching with the absence.

First Ajay was gone from her belly, and now he is gone from her back, and she does not know what to do. She is adrift without her anchor. Her body is so light, it might float away. He is back with Mohan, suckling at the breasts of a hired woman, surrounded by strange faces.

She sees the soldiers guarding the fortress entrance before they see her, and she steels herself. They will not hurt an unarmed woman, still so young and fresh and nearly-childish. Still, the ripple of fear runs through her core. What if they know? What if they see right through her?

Ishwari pauses and looks back down the hill, across the valley. She could go back – but to what? Mohan’s derision? He already saw her as weak; going back would only confirm it. Going back would be a life sentence, an eternal imprisonment.

Her heart aches for Ajay. She presses on, dropping her walking stick and raising her hands as the guards see her. One jogs out to meet her, AK-47 bumping against his shoulder. He is so young, almost as young as her.

“Papers?”

“I lost them. Please, I’m seeking refuge with Pagan Min. I’m the Tarun Matara.”

The boy’s eyes widen in surprise and he fumbles with his words, nodding his head in a quick bow. The old habits die hard here in Kyrat. He grabs the radio at his side.

“Captain.”

“Yes? What?” The response is stiff and impatient and muddled with static.

“The Tarun Matara is here. She seeks refuge with Pagan Min.”

There is a long silence, and the boy shoots Ishwari a nervous smile, an attempt at reassurance.

Finally: “Bring her in.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She goes up the mountain.

She can see the glittering lights of the palace, twinkling like stars on the mountain through the frigid January night. But it is still no closer, and there has been complete radio silence for nearly two hours. 

The guards have allowed her to sit down and rest her aching feet, swollen from the long hike. She tells them that she’s been on the run for days, and she looks it. Smells it, even. She made sure of that, fasting and abstaining from showers for a week before she left for the fortress. She even rolled in a ditch for good measure on her way here, making sure to get bits of twig and leaves stuck in her hair and dress. The Golden Path had dropped her off deep in the valley, well away from prying eyes, so she did not have to hike the whole way from her home. Even so, it was a hard hike for a young mother, back and knees still aching from the pregnancy weight. 

The guards barely speak to her. They brew her a pot of hot tea and give her a nearly-clean teacup – scrubbed hastily on the corner of a shirt – and leave her be, eyeing her nervously from across the room. There are only two, but occasionally others wander in to gawk at her shifty-eyed before wandering back out. 

She cannot grudge them this. Only a few years ago, she was extolled as a goddess among her people, an icon. The new king has done his best to do away with all that old superstition, but it lives on within the hearts of the people, even his most loyal soldiers. She sits there, a little piece of ousted divinity in their communications room, and their Kyrati hearts still know her for what she is, no matter what King Min says. So they stand, and glance at her furtively, muttering to one another. 

She sits quietly and doesn’t speak. She doesn’t dare, not now. The minutes are inching by and with every second she expects someone to come in, to expose her for what she is, to put her up against a wall and shoot her before she can even cry out for Mohan or her baby boy. 

But nothing happens. She sips her tea, and looks at her hands, and waits until her buttocks start to ache from the cold metal chair. In the far distance, a wolf-howl pierces the still night, and she shivers, looking back out the window at the distant lights above.

Two are moving.

They blink out of sight, and then emerge again, bigger and brighter, and she realizes it is a car coming down the mountain. She involuntarily straightens up, strains to see it, and one of the guards comes over and glances out before muttering something to his companion. They clean a second cup and pour more tea, preparing.

Ishwari’s stomach won’t stop fluttering.

Sooner than she’d like, they hear an engine and the scrape of tires on gravel outside. Two doors slam, and within minutes, a young woman with straight black hair and razor-sharp bangs walks into the room. 

“This is her?” She asks in Hindi with a jerk of her chin towards Ishwari. 

“Yes. Would you care for some-?” 

“No. The king wants to see her right away.” The woman’s boots click on the concrete as she strides up to Ishwari, looking down at her coldly. There is nothing of Kyrat in her face, no understanding, no recognition. She does not see the Bride in Ishwari’s eyes. It is only one woman staring at another. “Well,” she says shortly. “Come on.”

Ishwari glances at the guards, but they do not meet her eyes, and she has no choice but to rise slowly and follow the taller woman’s impatient steps out into the cold night. The driver is standing outside of the jeep with a cigarette cradled between his hands and mouth, but as soon as he sees them, he throws it to the ground and stamps it out. The woman gets in the shotgun seat, and the driver ushers Ishwari into the backseat.

“We’re going up?” Ishwari asks, and her voice croaks embarrassingly. 

“Yeah.”

“When will the king see me?”

“He wants to meet you as soon as possible,” the woman says in a way that promises no further conversation. Her accent is rolling and curved in a way Ishwari can’t place, but she falls into silence and stares out the window, leaving her to sit quietly in the backseat as they ascend the mountain. The driver glances into the review mirror every so often, but keeps his silence. 

The road is long and winding and so narrow that it almost seems like they’ll drive right off it, but they never do, and suddenly the roadway is bathed with light as the trees part and they pass beneath the palace gate. The car stops and the woman ushers Ishwari out without a word, and they approach the front door. The woman raises her hand to sound the bell, but before she can, it opens.

“Yuma! That was quick. Thank you, dear.” A man in deep blue trousers and an open silk shirt clasps the black-haired woman on the shoulder and looks past her, smiling, to where Ishwari stands. He looks almost like a white man at first, with that shock of blonde hair and the sharpness of his features, but then he meets her eyes and she realizes.

Without hesitation, she drops to her knees, head bowed and hands held up in supplication. “King Min!” She cries, her voice croaking again, but her heart is pounding and she can’t be bothered with it now. “I have come to beg you for your protection! Please, grant this Tarun Matara your sanctuary!”

“Goodness, please, let’s have none of that!” Two strong hands grasp hers and she looks up in surprise to see the king bending over her, grinning in amusement. “None of those quaint traditionalisms, hm? Come on, up, on your feet. There we are.” His voice is rich and his accent Western and he is looking at her in the face like an equal as he pulls her up. 

“Now then,” he says gently. He has still not let go of her hands, and she dare not pull them away. “You seem to know who I am. You are Ishwari…?”

“Ishwari Pradhan,” she chokes out, giving him her birth name. How is he not seeing right through her? How is he not hearing Mohan behind every word? She is sure she must have betrayed herself a hundred times by now. But there is no turning back now, no running away. There is only King Min in front of her, anchoring to the spot with his soft, elegant hands.

“Ishwari Pradhan. Wonderful to meet you. You may call me Pagan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it seems I'm posting these rather quickly, but I wrote Chapter I last night without publishing it and Chapter II tonight. I hope to continue at a fairly good pace, but don't expect me to keep up such a brisk speed as this.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is not what she expected.

She hadn’t been sure what to expect when she met the new king. She had seen fuzzy pictures on the television, and then there were posters and the new money, but it is so much different in person. He is much taller than her stout five-foot frame, and slender, and he speaks like a Westerner. Next to him, the English she studied so hard in school feels clumsy and halting.

Mohan and his friends were always speaking of Pagan Min as if he was a demon, but the man standing in front of her is no demon. He has eager eyes and a kind smile, and he does not seem like the type of person who could just kill people in cold blood.

Remember the pictures, she reminds herself, and shivers a little. Mohan had come home, wracked with grief and shaking with rage. He was pale and looked as if he’d been sick. “That fucking traitor!” he had howled. “He killed them all! He killed everyone! He has brought ruin to Kyrat!” She had tried to learn more from him, but he was inconsolable for days.

He had, somehow, managed to get some photos of the massacre, hoping to one day publicize them as proof of Pagan’s barbarity. Ishwari had looked at them a week later, curious despite herself, and she’d nearly thrown up. The young prince lay on the floor in a pool of dark brown blood, a dozen cuts all over his chest and abdomen, eyes open and blank and staring at the ceiling. 

“Pagan did that himself,” Mohan had told her. “He left the attendants and the servants to his men, but he killed the prince himself. They were having dinner together, somebody told me, and he just took his steak knife and started stabbing the boy. What kind of monster could do that?”

After she saw the pictures, she had begun to imagine Pagan as the demons she’d been raised with. In her mind’s eye, Pagan was a white-haired devil with a twisted death-mask face like Yalung. His fingernails were long and his teeth were sharp and he shrieked like a Rakshasa, smoke pouring from black nostrils. 

But now real Pagan is standing in front of her in a silk shirt and with bleached hair and wearing women’s makeup on his eyes. She has never seen a man dressed like this, not in the few times she’s managed to see a little foreign tv, not in any of her books. Certainly none of the men from her little village in the south ever looked like this. If Pagan is a Rakshasa or a demon like Yalung the way Mohan described him, he is in a disguise she could never have imagined. The man in front of her is wearing a clean button-down shirt and perfectly pressed slacks. His fingernails are immaculate and his hands are soft. 

What kind of demon is this?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She tries to remember how to pretend.

On the morning of her consecration, Ishwari woke up feeling like a knife was in her heart. She had been looking forward to this day for months, as soon as she was proclaimed Tarun Matara. It made her feel so special, to know she was the Bride, to know she was never alone, that her soul accompanied itself as divinity, that she was beloved of Banashur, eternal consort to He Who Sang the World into Existence. There had not been many children in her village, and she had no brothers or sisters, but somehow, knowing this, it made her loneliness feel all better. On top of it all, she had been promised an education – a high prize for a plain Kyrati village girl. That made her heart race with the very thought of it. She knew how to read a little, but she would be tutored by the royal tutors themselves, taught literature and art and music and history and maybe, if she’s lucky, even how the stars turn and how the earth rolls through space.

But the morning of her consecration was different. Suddenly the future seemed a great blank slate and the past, lonely as it was, shone out, calling her back. She didn’t want to sit in some stuffy chamber learning, she wanted to run wild in the fields like she had as a little girl, playing and laughing and rolling in the poppies. She managed to stay calm and collected until it came time to do her makeup for the ceremony. She looked in the mirror as mama finished and saw a stranger with pink cheeks and outlined eyes and red lips staring back at her, and she burst into tears. 

“I don’t want to be the Bride,” she sobbed to mama, “I just want to be normal. I just want to be Ishwari.”

Her mother sat and wiped her tears and held her gently. “I know,” she said softly, “I know. But all those people out there are waiting for you. You must be their Tarun Matara. Just smile and laugh, and pray to the Gods, and pretend that you are in a happy place doing something you love.”

When Ishwari finally managed to calm down, her mother redid her makeup and cleared away the run-marks. The ceremony went on as planned, and Ishwari smiled and laughed and just pretended that it was her birthday. She was eight years old.

When she became an earthly bride, five years later, Mohan believed his new wife was happy. She smiled and laughed and blushed when appropriate, and it was her birthday again, and she loved her new husband. He did not see her shaking heart, her spinning brain. Over time, of course, she came to love him truly. He was fierce and brave and endlessly passionate for his country. Over time, she even was able to forget pretending to Mohan. She no longer had to impress him, to put on a gentle face for him. She was happy.

But then the Nationalists took over, and after them Pagan Min, and Mohan changed, and she found that she was unable to smile for him sincerely or as pretend. The walls closed in, and Mohan forgot her unless he needed his Tarun Matara to make an appearance and cheer the still-religious Royalists. Even then, she could not smile, not even for her people, not even to cheer them or give them hope. She was a Bride in a box for both her earthly and heavenly husbands.

Now, the pretending feels rusty, limp like an unused muscle. She feels a virgin bride again, heart pounding, brain rushing, struggling to breathe as normally as possible and look appropriately distressed.

Of course, it is easier now to pretend distress than happiness. It is not so far from the truth of things. 

Pagan ushers her inside, and she looks around, expecting to see the royal hangings she grew up with. She knows the palace well; she spent five years there, after all, a part of the royal household, learning at the feet of royally-appointed tutors. The paintings of holy seers still coat the deep red walls, the same velvet hangings girding them and the same incense pouring out of bowls. But now, false and unfamiliar gods, faces she doesn’t recognize, Chinese faces, peer up at her in the form of little statues. She does not know these deities with their black eyes and long beards, their bodies garbed with ostentatious silks robes and gold ornaments instead of the humble shawls and loincloths of Kyrati deities. Some offer forth ripe peaches and fistfuls of gold, while others stand menacing with long, gleaming spears. None sit in peaceful meditation, their eyes turned to their inner heaven.

Pagan leads her into the old parlor, which has been turned into a cozy dining room, the table overflowing with fine foods. As she peers around herself, her eyes land on a large framed painting that stuns her by its familiarity.

“Napoleon,” she whispers, and there he is: white horse rearing and screaming, blood-red cape swept in the wind, ferocious black eyes burning with determination.

“You know Napoleon?” Pagan looks at her, surprised in turn, an undercurrent of admiration in his voice.

“Yes. My old tutor taught me about him.”

“You’re well educated, for a Kyrati woman, if you don’t mind me saying it.”

Ishwari feels something in her chest stiffen and she steps away from him. “Yes. I am the Tarun Matara.”

“I suppose that comes with certain…benefits.”

“Yes,” she repeats, and looks back to the painting, not wanting to meet his eyes. She changes the subject. “But why Napoleon?”

“When I was about five, my mother had a dream that I was given a white horse that looked exactly like the one he’s on. A horse fit for an emperor.” Pagan steps forward, closing the space between them once again as he looks at the piece. “And then it trampled me to death.”

“And yet you keep the painting in your home,” she says, looking at the flailing legs of the animal, the hooves shining pale in the war-light. “I suppose you’ve taken the problem by the reins.”

His laughter is so sudden and loud it makes her jump, and she turns swiftly to look at him, her cheeks burning. But one look at his face, and she realizes he is not laughing from mockery.

“Ishwari, you are a delight! I hope you don’t mind if I keep you around a little while longer.”

And just like on her wedding day, Ishwari smiles and blushes, casting her eyes down in humility. “Thank you, my King. Thank you.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is her host.

She is put up in one of the guest chambers, a room the size of her mother’s home. Everything is so familiar, and yet so oddly…off. She had been in this room before, more than ten years ago, back when it belonged to the then-ancient Dowager Queen. She rarely left these rooms back then, too old and bent and tired to move around the palace much. However, she had liked the young Tarun Matara, and had her take a break from studies and visit for tea at least once a week. Ishwari could remember staring at the woman’s wrinkled old hands, thick as leather and spotted with dark circles. She couldn’t believe, at the young age of eight, that she could ever grow to be so old. She still doubts it now.

The Dowager Queen’s old things have all been cleaned out, probably to be auctioned off. Even her favorite blue bed-clothes are gone now, replaced with all green and gold. The décor is all modern now, too, contrasting harshly with the more traditional downstairs where the new king meets his guests. 

“I hope you like it,” Pagan says as he shows her around, though he seems uninterested in hearing if she doesn’t. “I did some redecorating in here as soon as I moved in. That old style was suffocating me.”

He opens up the wardrobe and looks back at her. “I suppose you don’t have any bags, do you? Well, no matter, I’ll have clothing bought for you. We can’t have the Tarun Matara looking like a peasant.” He doesn’t notice when she winces. “In the meantime, there’s a toilet just through that door, and you can wash up just in time for dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Yes.” He turns and smiles warmly at her, his painted eyes crinkling in a smile. “You’ll join me for dinner every night that you’re here. I know so little about my new home, and I can’t think of a better person to teach me.” It is not a request.

When Pagan finally takes his leave, Ishwari sinks to the floor, breathing hard and fast. No air seems to be able to stay in her lungs; she can’t fill them no matter how hard she tries, and there’s some sort of weight pressing down on her ribs. Dinner, every night. 

You can do this, Ishwari, she tells herself. It’s just dinner. Just sit and smile and charm him the same as you used to do with Mohan when you were first married.

There are tears flowing down her cheeks, she realizes, and wipes them away. It only succeeds in smearing the grime on her skin. The soft rug cushions her sore knees like a cloud and she can hear music in some other corner of the palace, trickling through walls decked with mirrors and sconces and crystal. 

Ishwari swallows her memories. She must not think of Ajay now, or Mohan. There is nothing she can do now to go back to them. She leans forward until her forehead is touching the floor, trembling as if in fearful prayer, but no prayers come to her lips. Nothing even comes to her mind, only the thought of the dining room downstairs filled with Napoleon and the King.

Eventually, air comes back into her lungs, and her mind stops racing. At last, she’s able to think long enough to know to get to her feet, to run a bath. She sits in the warm water and rubs the bar of soap down her legs and across her belly and around her aching breasts, moving like a robot and concentrating only on the next step, and the next. If she looks any further forward than that, she can feel the walls of herself trembling and threatening to cave in again. 

It’s almost embarrassing to get back into the dirty rags she’d arrived in, now that the rest of her is clean. She feels even more out of place downstairs in the dining room, with the candles lit and the table piled with gourmet dishes she’s never seen before. They’re held in little wooden circles and give off a fine aroma, sweet and meaty. She isn’t sure if she should sit or not without Pagan here, so she goes back to the painting of Napoleon and looks at it more closely.

“It’s a reproduction,” Pagan says from behind her. She glances back and sees that he’s put on a fine jacket of deep violet. “I cannot convince a single museum to sell me their copies.”

“I’d think that you’d know how to bypass such predicaments.” The words spill out of Ishwari’s mouth, but to her own horror, she keeps going. “If Napoleon could manage to cross those Alps, I think you can manage to cross a few legal barriers.”

Pagan smiles wryly, apparently unbothered by her candor. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it. But here, this is no time to talk about that old painting any longer. You must be famished. Sit down, please! Enjoy the spread.”

He sits down in the chair opposite the hallway door, the only seat for a ruler. Ishwari sits down across from him, looking in curiosity at the food laid out for them. To her surprise, her stomach begins to growl at the smells. She’d despaired of eating upstairs, convinced she’d never have an appetite again, but the walk was long and her body is caving to its earthly needs.

“What is it?” She asks, looking at the wooden circles. Almost everything is white and soft-looking, with a pink under-sheen, nothing like the roast mutton and pig she’s used to.

“Dim sum,” he says with a smile, and picks up the chopsticks lying next to his plate. “Despite appearances, I’m not a huge fan of my native cuisine. Dim sum, however, is the exception.”

“You don’t like Chinese food?” Ishwari tries to pick up the chopsticks and hold them as deftly as he does, but they are useless in her hands. She picks up a fork instead and waits to serve herself until he has. 

“Not really. I spent a lot of my childhood studying in England. I’m a little keener on western food, now, I suppose. Still, whenever I came home to visit mother and father, we’d go out for dim sum.”

Ishwari smiles a little, and takes a bite of the piece that she’s picked up. The outside is soft and gives way immediately to her teeth, and the pink sheen turns out to be steamed shrimp inside. “Whenever I came home, my mother would slaughter a whole pig and roast it over the fire. That was my favorite.”

Pagan raises an eyebrow. “Came home? Weren’t you raised here, in Kyrat?”

“I was raised here, in the palace.”

He stares at her in surprise and then laughs in delight, his nose crinkling like a boy’s. “So this is a homecoming for you! Wonderful. But now that you have me to yourself, tell me, why were you running in the first place?”

Ishwari puts her fork down, looking down at her lap. “Since the fall of the old king to the nationalists, I have been going from place to place, with no home of my own and no protector. Many people want the Tarun Matara these days, for many reasons. I thought the safest place might be in the halls of my education.”

“Well, Ishwari, you thought right.” He takes another dumpling and bites into it, chewing thoughtfully. “As you probably know, I am not of your religion. But it is important to me that I win the hearts of my people. I hope that you, their spiritual leader, will vouch for my goodness and kindness as their ruler?”

Ishwari smiles benignly, remembering the pictures of the palace massacre and holding the memory deep within herself. “If you show as much generosity to my people as you have to me, I will speak of nothing else.”

“Good. Then we understand each other. Here, eat up.” He stands and leans over the table, piling food from the wooden circles onto Ishwari’s plate. 

“Will you tell me about England?” She asks as she tries another dumpling. 

Pagan sits down and leans, grinning, back in his chair. She has given him an audience, she realizes, something that he can’t help but take advantage of. He tells her of the soaring cathedrals, the rolling plains, the bustling cities, the towers with ghosts of little dead boys. Ishwari sits and listens, and allows herself to forget for a little while that the charming man across from her is her enemy. She allows herself to enjoy being his audience, his stories seeping into her bones like the rice wine they’re drinking. By the time the candles grow low, she is stuffed on dim sum and there are leaden weights on her eyes. He notices her drooping and sends her to bed, and she stumbles upstairs, falling asleep without even turning down the covers, her joints throbbing with exhaustion.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She feels discouraged.

Ishwari awakes the next day to the sound of a door opening. Her first thought is that Mohna has spent another night out, away from her. She opens her eyes to see a strange room and sits up, gasping.

 “Miss Ishwari.” There is a young girl, no older than fifteen, at the foot of her bed, in servant’s clothes. She holds a large basket full of clothes. “I’ve brought you new clothes, and I am to take away your old ones.”

 Ishwari looks around herself, dazed. There is still sleep clinging to her, fogging her mind. Pagan’s palace, she remembers, she is in the belly of the beast.

 “Yes, of course,” she murmurs, and slowly stands, unused to the feeling of rich carpet beneath her feet. The girl helps her out of her ragged, stained traveling clothes and gives her fresh ones, unabashed by the baby-paunch and stretch marks marring Ishwari’s brown skin.

 “The King has ordered a new wardrobe for you from the west,” the laundress explains, “but in the meantime, I’ve brought some clean skirts and shirts for you.” She helps Ishwari into one of the newly-pressed outfits from her basket and then moves to put the rest in the old antique wardrobe leaning up against the wall. “Be sure to check the pockets, Miss.”

 Ishwari sticks a hand into the pocket of her skirt, and feels a piece of paper. Glancing back at the laundress, she pulls it out and reads it.

  _Ishwari –_

_Trust this girl with all our correspondence. She is with us. Remember to burn all my letters._

_Mohan_

“Is this all there is?” She asks testily.

 “That’s all I was given.”

 That’s it. That’s all. No mention of Ajay, no further direction of what to do here, what he expects her to look for. He’s dropped her into enemy territory with only one vague task: spy on Pagan Min.

 He used to be so open with her, so keen to involve her in all the Golden Path’s doings. But the more she spoke up, the more she took initiative, the cagier he became. Now there was truly no doubt that this was her punishment for her continued “undermining” of his leadership. Mohan had adored her when she was a naïve but precocious girl, intelligent enough to advise him but awed enough to bow to his wishes. But as she grew older, as pregnancy pushed her to speak out loud more and more often, he had begun to distance himself.

 Well, if she could not prove herself during all that time, perhaps some sort of success here will finally make him realize her worth. She resolves, boring holes into the letter with her eyes, that she will become the most valuable asset he has. She will _not_ be treated like some kind of pawn, worthy only of brusque little notes delivered in her laundry. He will be writing love letters to her again by the end.

 The laundress is watching her, she realizes. She takes the letter and holds it over a candle. “I don’t have anything to give you now.”

 “Is it true,” the laundress pauses, and lowers her voice. “Is it true you had dinner with the King last night?”

 “It is.”

 “And?”

 “And nothing. I have barely begun to understand this foreigner.” The rest of the paper turns to ash, and Ishwari brushes her hands of it.

 “They say you will have dinner with him every night.”

 “They are correct. I only hope future dinners will be more fruitful than last night’s.”

 The laundress nods quietly and puts the dirty clothes in her basket, but pauses before she picks it up. “Maybe,” she starts, glancing up at Ishwari in worry, as if afraid she’s been too over-eager. It only seems to give her a moment’s pause, because in half a second more words come tumbling out of her mouth. “I mean, you’ll be spending so much time with him. You’re the Tarun Matara. Maybe you can try and influence him? Make him…better. Toward the Kyrati people. Just for the time that you’re here. He must know you’re important, or else he wouldn’t have brought you here.”

 Ishwari can’t help but smirk at that. “I doubt it. The King wants me as a figurehead. He thinks it will bring legitimacy to his claim if he has me to parade around.”

 “He said that?”

“He didn’t need to. He asked me hardly a question about Kyrat. The moment I asked him about his time in England instead, he forgot entirely that I had anything to say at all. He talked for over an hour.” Ishwari sighs. “It was interesting, I suppose, but there will be no influencing him. He showed what he values last night: an audience.”

The laundress doesn’t bother to hide her disappointment. “Well, I’ll pass it on, I suppose.”

 “No, don’t say that. Just say I am well, and that I am to eat with the King every night.” Ishwari doesn’t want to imagine what Mohan would think of her if her first report was just that Pagan had given her an hour-long speech about foreign lands nobody cared about. Her first impression as a spy must not be one of uselessness.

 The girl bows and heads for the door, but pauses before she leaves. “I’m Chesa, by the way.”

 Ishwari doesn’t answer. She is looking at the ashes under her fingernails. She barely hears the door shut.

  _Perhaps that is the key_ , she thinks. _The more he chatters, the more likely something interesting will spill out. I just have to smile and nod and admire every word he says. Eventually, he might trust me enough to tell me anything._

 It seems she is destined to do nothing but listen to men, no matter where life takes her.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She finds the library.

Despite her discouragement, dinner ends up being the part of the day Ishwari looks forward to most. The palace is quiet during the day, as Pagan is often away and there are few willing to talk to her. Most of the guards look at her warily, unsure of how to treat this commoner-goddess, and the maids seem unwilling to cease their work for chatting. There is only Chesa, who comes in every couple of days, bringing her letters from Mohan.

 _Ishwari_ , one reads, _Chesa tells me the king has dinner with you each night. You need to use all your charms now: do not be humble or sheepish. You have always been very charming, to me and to our Kyrati brethren. Remember the way you were after we were married? Be as you were on our wedding night. I have complete confidence in you._

_Mohan._

She does not need to be told this. She burns the letter, and writes back to him, telling him of Pagan’s liking for alligator meat, his employment of poachers to bring him a freshly-killed one at least once a month. At dinner a few nights later, she eats alligator steak and waits for Pagan to drop dead of poison. He never does, but he tells her a story about nearly falling into a pool of alligators during the civil war, and he makes her laugh.

The next letter comes a few days later.

_Ishwari,_

_Our men scored a great victory against Pagan’s forces today. We seized the Kyra Tea Factory from Pagan’s men. When we got in, we found that they had begun the production of opium. This monster will pave our lands over with drug farms if we let him. Do all you can to find out his plans. The faster you do, the faster we may thwart them._

_Ajay spoke today. He called for you. I wish I had a recording of it to send to you. Complete your mission and hurry home, that you may hear him speak for yourself._

_Mohan._

Ishwari’s hands tremble as she writes her reply, telling him of Pagan’s questions to her the previous night about the soil in the south, but she cannot help but spend most of the letter begging for more news of Ajay. Is he saying anything else? How often? Does he seem to miss me? Have his ears and nose stayed clear? Is he nursing well? She fills the page with questions.

 _Every night I long for both of you,_ she assures him at the end of her letter. _Life is so lonely here, separate from you, my family. I ache for you._

She folds up the paper and sticks it into waiting Chesa’s basket.

“Please,” she asks the girl, “do you ever see them? Can you tell me how my son is?”

Chesa shakes her head sadly. “I’m sorry, Ishwari,” she whispers, so that no-one in the hall might overhear. “I hardly ever see anyone. They’re all the way in the south. I never leave the royal territories.”

“Ask your contact for a picture of Ajay and Mohan. Ask them to send one to me.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” says Chesa, in a way that convinces Ishwari that there will be no picture, not now, not ever. She drops her hands to her sides and sits down, reading and re-reading the last few sentences of Mohan’s letter as Chesa leaves. She doesn’t burn this one. Instead, she finds a loose floorboard and carefully pries it up until she can slide the paper beneath it.

During the day, she wanders around the palace, exploring more, looking in fascination at the little Chinese statues and watercolors brought over from a foreign land. China had always seemed like such a distant concept to her, a looming powerhouse that always stood just far enough away to be completely indistinct. And now it is here, in Kyrat, mixing with the thangka and old gods like they’ve always been together and sharing a room, a shrine, a temple. There is an angry god with a bristling black beard and black face, and his twin, a red-faced god with a long, smooth beard and stern aspect. There are paintings of fine ladies, four in a row, pretty smiles on red lips, except for one. The third woman lights incense, tears in her eyes, a quiver in her lip, the full moon shining bright above her head. Ishwari stands and stares at it a long time, until a guard – one of the mercenaries – passes by. She gestures him over and points to the painting.

“Si da mei nu,” he tells her with a grin.

“English?”

He shakes his head, shrugging and smiling apologetically. “No English.”

This is the only conversation she has all that day.

She is half-convinced she will die of boredom by the day she finds the new library. The old library was the first place she’d checked, only to find it sacked and used as weapons storage. But at long last, she finds the new one. It is on the second floor instead of the first now, closer to the king’s chambers than before. She’d been hesitant to go down to that part of the hall, worrying she might disturb him, but desperation finally drives her, and she finds it still under construction with books still in boxes. She takes to opening the cardboard with a vengeance, digging through and looking for things to read. To her relief, there are relatively few books in Chinese, and more than enough in English. There is very little fiction, to her disappointment, but plenty of history, political books, even a few books on “self-actualization” (she has to sound that one out carefully).

The rest of the day is spent sitting in the half-constructed library among the white sheets draping furniture and buckets of paint and cardboard boxes, reading a book about a king named Richard.

That evening, she brings the book to dinner.

“I was looking through the library,” she says. “I hope you don’t mind. Could I borrow this, maybe?”

“Yes, of course!” Pagan tells her without even looking at the book. “I hardly have any time to read these days anyway. If you want to make yourself useful, you can feel free to unpack the rest and put them on the shelves. So what are you reading?”

“It’s called _The Life and Times of Richard III._ ”

“Ahh, good old Richard. I only remember the story about the boys in the tower. I’m afraid I’ve hardly been able to read all the books people have given me.”

“Boys in the tower?”

“Locked his nephews in a fortress tower. They were just little boys, but he had them starved to death or something. To tell the truth, I don’t remember much.”

Ishwari shudders and thinks of Ajay, looking down at the book in her hands. “Maybe I’ll read something else, then.”

Pagan laughs. “Well, help yourself. I’m not going to be reading them, so someone might as well.”

She can hardly think of anything else as they eat, and entirely forgets her mission. As soon as dinner is over, she rushes back up to the library, putting the biography of King Richard down and hunting voraciously for anything and everything she might read. There is nothing, to her disappointment, in her own language, but some of the English looks easy enough to read, and to her luck she finds a massive copy of the Oxford English Dictionary for reference. She leaves the dictionary in the library – it’s far too heavy – but goes back to her room and makes a list of every English word she doesn’t understand as she reads. She falls asleep like that, surrounded by her books and her pen and list, full of words ready to be looked up in the morning. The library gives her something new to do. She unpacks all the books from their boxes and shelves them, going by the numbers she finds written on the cardboard flaps. In the meantime, she makes a mental note of everything that looks interesting and takes little breaks to look up new words in the dictionary.

Still, she can’t help but feel frustrated. Organizing Pagan’s library was hardly the reason Mohan sent her here, and there’s not much progress being made at dinner, even if Pagan seems to be increasingly enjoying her company.

She had thought it would all be listening, endless listening, even if the stories are good. Instead, Pagan begins to probe her with questions, genuinely interested.

“Was it hard,” he asks her one night, “growing up here, among royals?”

Ishwari puts down her knife and fork and looks around at the walls in which she grew up.

“In a way,” she says. “I missed my family so much. But the little nephew of the old king was here and-” she freezes, staring at Pagan. She remembers the picture of the young man, only a year or two younger than her, still and empty-eyed in a pool of his own blood.

Pagan looks back at her, impassive. “The rumors are true,” he says with a shrug. “I killed him.”

She looks down at her hands. The words have dried up in her mouth. She imagines his hands, stained with the boy’s blood, holding the cruel, gory little knife.

Pagan sighs, and stands up, coming over to sit down in the chair right next to her. He reaches out and takes her hand, and she stares at her brown little hand folded up in his big pale one, the long, delicate fingers wrapping around hers.

“Ishwari,” he tells her, “I do not want you to be frightened to be around me. You’ve an incredible tongue in your mouth, though you don’t seem to use it very often for some reason. Please, use it with me. You are in no danger in my house.”

 _Did you tell the same thing to the young prince?_ she wonders. She remembers playing in the garden with the boy, sitting and studying under their old tutor together. He would fidget terribly and always seemed to have the sniffles, but he’d been the only companion her age for so many years. But now, she can barely remember his face without seeing, superimposed, the picture of him lying dead.

Ishwari shoves the memory away from her, boxes it up for later. Instead she looks up at Pagan with a wry smile, squeezing his hand. "For you, then, my king, my tongue is loosened. Do not complain when you dislike the result."

Pagan's face breaks out in a smile, and he winks at her. "Complain? Me? Never."

They return to their meal, only now Pagan stays in the chair beside her to eat. She almost breathes a sigh of relief, thinking it odd that as a spy, she can expect less complaining about her tongue than in her own home. At home, though, it was only ever complaining and tension and fights. Here, she may still end up on the floor, a thousand little holes in her chest.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She charms him.

Charm him, Mohan had suggested, so she throws all her effort into doing so. She refuses to let herself be afraid of speaking her mind any longer, now that he has said how it pleases him.

 _Anyway_ , she reminds herself, _he will not get rid of me just yet. He wants the Tarun Matara around for a little while longer._

For good reason, too. Mohan writes her later that week, telling her that people have begun to speak well of Pagan more often, now that they know he’s keeping the Tarun Matara safe. Pagan must have leaked the news almost immediately, ensuring that the news would fly across the nation. Few had known where she’d disappeared to once the nationalists took over: her betrothal and marriage to Mohan (“for your protection”) had been kept quiet. She had spent the past few years secreted away (“for your protection”) on the side of a mountain, nobody knowing of her location, her marriage, or her pregnancy except for a few chosen upper members of the Golden Path. The Kyrati people had rarely seen her except at festivals, during which she was flanked by heavily armed Golden Path members in civilian clothes, and after which she was whisked away into oblivion.

Now that news of her has resurfaced, now that the people know she is safe with the King, they are praising Pagan for his respect for the Goddess and the traditions of Kyrat. Pagan didn’t believe in the old ways and had taken measures to tone down the fervor of festival seasons, but even he had understood the value of keeping her close by. Ishwari had hoped this would happen, of course, and so had Mohan. A gain in Pagan’s public image is a small price to pay for the reward he’ll experience in keeping the Bride close to him, and the closer she stays, the more effective their plan will become.

Mohan’s letter is ecstatic. _The happier he is about all this_ , he writes, _the more he’ll value you. This is your chance to worm your way in, Ishwari. Pagan already seems to like you, from what you’ve told me. Use this to your advantage._

She does. By day she listens for gossip from the servants: where is he going today? What is he doing? What was that unholy racket last night, Pagan bellowing in Chinese with such rage that Ishwari could hear every syllable through her walls? She also works in the library. She puts books on the shelves and does her best to organize them in a way that at least makes a little sense, though she’s not certain she’s doing it right. The hard work, lifting and stacking and shifting, it’s all such a good distraction from the anxiety that piles up in the pit of her stomach every day.

In the late afternoon, she returns to her rooms for a long, hot bath. The already luxurious baths of the palace that she’d known have been updated and replaced with ever more westernized, ever more grandiose features. It’s a long time since she last relaxed this much on her own during a bath. At home, she always bathed with a sponge under the faucet, but sometimes, before Ajay was born, she’d fill up the big old tub and she and Mohan would climb in and sit there together, looking out across the valley She’d rub his tense shoulders, savoring the soapy slide of her skin against his, and listen to him as he poured out his heart about espionage, strategy, guerilla warfare, and she’d wish with all her heart that he’d let her down off her mountain to walk that danger with him. She’d close her eyes as he spoke, leaning her forehead against the back of his head, imagining herself in the center of all that, fighting and strategizing at his side. Those were good nights, when Mohan would stand up stark naked in the cool air and towel them both off, his rough hands gentle and his square face softened in a smile. He’d carry her inside, cradling her in his arms, and lay her in bed and make love to her until they both drifted off to sleep, summer crickets chirping in their ears. He took refuge in her embrace back then, back before her tongue was loosened by pregnancy and she began demanding a life at his side.

Here, in this marble tub, she is more alone in the water than she’s ever been, but it is a pause for breath, a chance to still herself just before going into her own battle. After bathtime every afternoon, she must dress herself and put up her hair for dinner with Pagan.

Charm him, Mohan had told her, and charm him she does, a glamorous movie actress with a wicked tongue and a gentle smile, the combination of which delights the King. He no longer talks for the entire meal; they speak in equal measure and she feels as if she hasn’t opened her mouth so often in years. He tells her of his childhood, adrift between English schools and Hong Kong streets, coming home from London prep schools to watch his mother wither away in despair under the authoritarian hold of patriarch Gang Min. He always says that name with a sneer. When she tells him of her own childhood, offered up to Banashur and then to the old king as a prized bauble (she stops him before she speaks of her marriage, yet another hand-off to check off the list), he listens. He really listens. Mohan told her it was her duty, praised her for being a good daughter of Kyra, going so obediently wherever she was bid with a bright smile on her face. But Pagan sits and listens and _understands_.

“What was it like, going home?” he asks her one night. “While you were living at the palace, I mean.”

“Terrible,” she admits, and she isn’t lying. “I came home in silks and pretty necklaces, and my parents could hardly recognize me. They treated me like a stranger, like an honored guest. Not their daughter.”

“Didn’t that make you angry?”

“Yes, but how could I show them? How could I do that to them? They lost their daughter to a god and then to a king. Could I blame them for not recognizing her when she came home? Neither of them could even read, but suddenly their plain village daughter could speak English.”

Pagan is sitting next to her. He always sits next to her at dinner now instead of sitting across from her. He reaches out and squeezes her hand the way he does whenever he’s trying to be comforting. She stares at him, this vicious tyrant who just yesterday had a whole family executed for harboring Golden Path revolutionaries, if the servants spoke truthfully. He meets her eyes and his face is soft and sad. Sad for her, she realizes, and tries to remember her little friend the young prince, lying dead on the floor.

Pagan’s hand is soft and warm on hers.

“Whenever I came home from England,” he tells her, “after being in London, seeing the people there, I’d come back to my father’s smoky opium-den of a house. My mother was shut up there like a nun. She always seemed so envious of my time there. Father never allowed her to go with me, so she always begged me to tell her everything. My father began thinking I was barely even his son anymore. Finally he cut off my trips to England, just as he had for her.”

“You must have missed it terribly.”

Pagan shrugs and returns to eating. “I missed being away from him, able to do as I pleased. It doesn’t matter; he eventually learned better than to try and pin me down.” The corners of his mouth turn up in a little smile, as if remembering a joke.

“Neither of us should be boxed up, Ishwari. If you would, I’d like you to come with me tomorrow. You spend too much time cooped up here in the library.”

Her heart jumps, and she puts her fork down, blood rushing in her ears. “What is it you intend to unbox me for?” She jokes with an easy, familiar smile. She earns a smile in return.

“In the raid yesterday, my men caught a rebel who we’re almost certain has some connections, though he isn’t giving anything up just yet. I want you to go with me to him, show him his goddess. Speak reason to him. Will you?”

He eyes her. This is a test. It must be a test. If she refuses, she is of no use to him, or worse. If she refuses, she will be discarded.

“I must see my people,” she replies, “if they need me. And my king assures me they do.”

He lifts her hand, smiling gratefully, and kisses it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They leave for Ratu Gadhi.

They rise early. Ishwari puts on the most modest thing in her closet; she cannot bear to think of the stares that she would get going out in fine silks. It was bad enough going home like that as a child, seeing her mother stare at the embroidery. She can’t bring herself to do it again.

Pagan is waiting for her in the main hall. He takes one look at her and tells her to go back up and change. “I want them to see a goddess,” he says, “not a fellow commoner.”

Ishwari is just about to turn around and go up to change, her head bowed in obedience, but suddenly something settles in her gut and she stops. “No,” she replies. “I have no interest in showing off to them.”

“You’re not _showing off_ ,” he snaps, fiddling impatiently with a diamond cufflink. “You’re _awing_ them. What is a goddess if she can’t awe people?”

“If I am a goddess,” she replies tersely, her voice trembling a bit with the tension in her muscles, “I will awe them no matter what I wear.”

Pagan folds his arms and takes a deep breath, pushing the air back out of his lungs through his nose, his jaw set. She meets his eyes, willing herself not to crumble before his cold stare, her face carefully neutral.

Finally, he shrugs, holding up his hands in surrender. “Fine,” he says. “Fine. We’ll try it your way.”

She smiles gently and dips her head in gratitude, and his gaze softens.

“Well, let’s get going. I hope you don’t mind eating on the run.” He leads her out the door to the courtyard, where a big, black helicopter is waiting for them, manned by smartly-dressed Royal Guards in their red berets. Pagan helps her in like a gentleman and climbs in after her, strapping her in and handing her her breakfast: a thermos full of hot tea and a flakey croissant that she has to hold in a napkin to prevent it from flaking all over her.

She’s trembling again, but now for a different reason: she has seen helicopters and airplanes fly overhead a multitude of times, and she’s watched out the window as Pagan’s helicopter arrives and departs whenever he has business, but her feet have never left the solid ground. Her head has never been level with mountains without touching the mountains themselves. She takes a gulp of air and then a sip of tea to mask her trepidation, and suddenly feels Pagan’s hand squeezing her knee.

“These are the safest helicopters in the world, and Lang up there is one of the best pilots I know.”

She nods, summoning her courage, but when the helicopter lifts off the ground she compulsively drops her croissant and grabs his hand where it rests on her knee. The pastry falls to the floor and slides out the door just before it slams shut. Thankfully, she doesn’t drop the tea thermos. Pagan envelops her hand in his, squeezing gently, but he’s looking out the window, a bright smile on his face.

It takes a moment for Ishwari to get up the bravery to even so much as glance out the window, but when she does, she gasps and can’t look away again. The sun is gleaming on the snow of the eastern range, turning the stones all deep blue and purple. Below them is spread all of Kyrat, rippling green and brown and grey in the morning glow, wrinkled with hills and slashed open with deep gullies through which rush glittering blue ribbons, throwing back the blinding glare of the sunlight.

“Where are we going?” she asks, her eyes drinking up the view greedily, her fear forgotten. Far below, she can see a herd of sambar dashing down a slope with their little skip-jumps, fleeing a pack of wolves.

“Ratu Gadhi. It’s an old military base. Normally, Yuma takes care of that area, but she’s away in the south at the moment.”

The flight is a couple hours long, but it passes by quickly. She’s drunk on the view. Pagan doesn’t let go of her hand for a long time, and she squeezes his tightly in return, especially when the helicopter tips or is buffeted by strong winds. She can feel his eyes on her, but she can’t be bothered with it. She can only stare out at lush, fertile Kyrat, wishing Ajay were here and old enough to appreciate it.

At last, she spots something which rattles her to her core with its unexpected familiarity. It is the mountain range against which is nestled her and Mohan’s home, but thrown in reverse, cutting great flat walls through the sky.

 _So this is what’s on the other side of my mountain,_ she thinks. _A fortress. And Ajay is only a mountaintop away from it. Away from me._

The roots of her nipples ache, and she holds tighter to Pagan’s hand without realizing it.

 _Ajay_ , her heart cries, _Ajay, my baby_.

It is so strong that she nearly reels, trying to hold back the agony that threatens to burst out of her chest. How long has it been? Only two weeks? Three? It feels an age and a half. Her whole body begs to cradle the child, to stroke his soft baby-skin and downy newborn hair, to put his hungry mouth to her breast and feel him suckle, to listen to his soft little sighs as he turns in his sleep. She should have demanded that Ajay go with her. She shouldn’t have let Mohan send her away without the boy. What kind of mother is she? What kind of mother willingly leaves her newborn son?

 _Don’t fool yourself_. _Mohan would die a thousand deaths before letting his son, his pride and joy, out of his sight._

Ishwari swallows her anger and her agony and looks over at Pagan. He’s still holding her hand, and she uses the feeling of it, soft and heavy, as an anchor. They are descending now to Ratu Gadhi and she cannot afford to lose herself in regrets now.

They land on a wide rooftop and Pagan helps down a narrow ladder. From there, they make their way out into a tight fortress town, full of soldiers and prostitutes and all others who flock after military encampments. The place is a din when they step into it, shouts of orders and amorous calls and promises for ten minutes of fun. Pagan moves through the noise, Ishwari close behind him, both of them flanked by a heavily-armed escort. The noise around them falls into a whisper and then silence. The occupants of the fortress stand and stare and the soldiers drop what they’re doing to snap to attention, chests puffed out proudly and heads held high. As soon as they pass, Ishwari hears the whispers start again, full of astonished excitement. Pagan had apparently neglected to let anyone know he’d be making a personal appearance.

He doesn’t even seem to notice the chaos around him; he walks smoothly, as if he were strolling down a quiet street, casual as can be. He belongs here, and he knows he does. It’s everyone else who is a guest in his presence.

Ishwari looks around the guards at the faces of the people they’re passing. Most don’t recognize her. Most eyes are on the king, but some land on her, flick back at her twice in confusion, trying to figure out this girl and her place and meaning. A few faces, though, the Kyrati eyes of the conscripted men and camp-followers, those are the ones that light u with the recognition of what she must be, what her body must house. The soldiers remain still, but a few of the women make little signs of devotion as she passes.

Ishwari can’t blame those who don’t know her. Even if they had seen her at festivals or processions, that girl had been several years younger and several pounds lighter, no baby-weight or wifely exhaustion clinging to her. But no matter: those who know her divinity will recognize it. The rest, blank Chinese faces with nothing of Kyrat in them, see just another peasant woman trailing close after the king like flies after hot bread.

“I wish you had worn something nicer,” Pagan complains as they enter a building built close up against the rock. “Nobody recognizes you.”

“I doubt they’d recognize me even if I wore a crown,” she retorts, “it’s been years since anyone’s seen me. To most people, I’m just another Kyrati woman.”

“Not to me,” he mutters, but says nothing else on the matter. They are descending into a basement bunker. She looks at the back of his head in confusion.

There’s not much time to think on his words. They are well into the bunker now, deep underground, concrete walls closed in around them and the stench of unwashed bodies suffocating them. Ishwari has to resist the urge to cover her mouth against the scent. Pagan doesn’t even seem to notice it. There are closed doors, solid metal, on either side of the hallway, and someone is moaning loudly, their voice cracked with guttural sobs. Ishwari is shaking at the knees and she can feel her stomach rebelling and gurgling with nausea.

The walls are too close, and there are long gutters down each side of the hall that have deep rusty-brown stains at their bottoms. She looks away from them, focuses her eyes on Pagan’s back, covered in perfectly-smooth blue silk. There is no noise but the boots on the floor, the moans and cries now receding behind them.

They stop at last outside a room toward the end of this seemingly-endless hallway and Pagan turns to her, smiling kindly. Ishwari struggles to hold back a shudder as he takes her hands in his.

“In there,” he tells her, is a member of a Golden Path cell. He calls himself Sandeep, I think. He probably doesn’t have any connection to the guys up top, but we have good reason to believe he’s connected to the leaders of his cell, and we want those boys _in_. I want you to tell him that his king, _their_ king, is graciously offering amnesty. I shall welcome them in with open arms if they hand themselves over peacefully.”

Ishwari tries not to glance at the stained floors. She keeps her gaze carefully on Pagan’s eyes “I’ll do my best,” she promises, and the cell door is unlocked and opened for her.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She speaks to the prisoner.

Pagan nudges Ishwari gently into the cell, and somehow she manages to move her feet, though they feel weighted down with stone.

There is nothing inside the room but a table and two chairs, a naked bulb hanging loose from the ceiling above. The floor is stained like the hallway outside and the room reeks of vomit and piss and something even worse beneath it. The only other occupant is a man who has to be Sandeep, back bent, head on the sheet metal table-top. His hands are manacled, chained to little hooks sticking up out of the metal, and his wrists are rubbed bloody-raw from where the metal meets his skin. He doesn’t lift his head as she enters or as the door slams shut with a dull clang behind her. The square room is tight and airless and the stench nearly overwhelms her, but Ishwari makes her way over to the table and sits gingerly down in the open chair. Sandeep remains still. Ishwari sits quietly, clenching the fabric of her skirt between her fingers. There are no words she can find. Her mouth has dried up.

At last, she reaches out and touches his arm, careful to avoid the bleeding skin. His flesh is oily and makes her shudder. Sandeep lifts his head, his eyes bleary, and stares at her. He looks at her absently, his face confused and lost, trying to place her. The muscles in her chest relaxes: she doesn’t know him either. He’s just another Kyrati face, cheeks gaunt and eyes hollow.

“Sandeep,” she says gently, “I’ve been sent to talk to you. I am the Tarun Matara.”

He stares at her, uncomprehending. “The Tarun Matara? Why? How?”

“The king has brought me here to speak with you.”

Sandeep lifts his eyes to gaze past her shoulder to the door, and then he turns to look at the wall. For the first time she notices what looks like a large mirror built into the wall. They are being watched. Every word is being noted down and translated for Pagan, who has to be on the other side of that mirror, watching intently with his eager brown eyes.

“Why does he send you?” the prisoner asks, looking back at her suspiciously

“I suppose you’ve heard where I’ve been living.”

“Everyone has. Everyone knows the Bride has returned and that she’s living with the Usurper. We just weren’t sure it was true.”

“It’s true. I am under the king’s protection.”

“So what does he want you to tell me?” Sandeep sits back, raising his manacled hands with a bitter little smile. “I can’t see how I’m of much importance to him.”

“Pagan has chosen you to be the bearer of an important message, if you will take it.”

“You’ll let me go?”

“Yes, if you take us to the leaders of your cell.”

Sandeep sneers and spits on the floor. “Rakshasa take the Usurper. Fuck him. I’d rather die in here.”

“If you do, then Kyrat will be no closer to peace. That is the message he wants you to take to your leaders. Peace. He is willing to welcome in _all_ the Kyrati people as he has so generously welcomed me. All he wants for our country is harmony.”

He stares at her long and hard, black eyes full of accusation. “And you side with him? You, the Tarun Matara? You serve him now?”

Nausea grips Ishwari’s stomach again, and she has to clench one fist under the table. “I serve none but the people, and the king wishes to do the same.” The lies taste acidic on her tongue and she can barely stand to stare Sandeep in the face or look into the eyes that have suffered so much for a free Kyrat. “This includes you and all the Golden Path. He welcomes his adopted people with his generosity and wants to embrace them in his benevolence.”

“The benevolence of a dictatorship.”

“Is it any different from our last king, or the one before that? We have always had monarchs here. What difference is it if he is a foreigner?” As soon as the words leave her mouth, Ishwari hates herself deeper than she ever has, but she can feel eyes gazing at her through the mirror and she continues. “Banashur wants nothing else but that all His children be united, together. Do you really think He wants his children suffering away in prison because of who sits on the throne? Do you not think, rather, that He would have them at home, with their own children? You can go home, Sandeep. King Min is giving you the chance to start over, to renounce your rebellious ways and to truly dedicate yourself to a united Kyrat.”

Sandeep bites his lip and covers his eyes. His shoulders are shaking. Ishwari sits back, swallowing against the rising bile in her throat, and lets him sit in silence a while.

“He’ll let me go?” he whispers at last, his voice broken. “No more torture?”

“No more torture. You have the chance to help broker the greatest treaty in Kyrati history. Your children will remember you as one of their country’s saviors, and you will see their faces as they cheer for their nation.”

Sandeep buries his head fully in his hands, tears dripping out between his fingers. At last, he nods, unable to speak.

Ishwari stands and kisses the crown of his head. “May Banashur bless you, Sandeep. Thank you.”

As soon as she exits the room, Pagan is there to greet her, his face shining with elation.

“That was wonderful!” He cries, and embraces her tightly in his arms. Ishwari doesn’t say anything; she just struggles out of his grasp and bends over, vomiting into the gutter. Her head is spinning and she can hardly think. It’s only her body reacting now, pushing out all the lies she’s just spun from thin air. Hot tears are dripping down her face and her nostrils are full of the smell of vomit and blood and feces. She lifts her shaking hands to wipe her face and there is blood on them and she reels.

A pair of strong hands catch her and she finds her self backed up against someone. “There now,” she hears Pagan saying, “it’s fine. You’re fine. Here, take this.” He presses something into her hand and she realizes it’s a handkerchief, light lavender and emblazoned with his initials.

He helps her walk back down the hall out of the bunker, an arm protectively around her shoulder. She wipes her face but keeps the handkerchief tight in her hand like a totem. When they emerge into the open air, she gasps it in like she was starving, welcoming even the smoky air of the fortress as it flushes out the smells from her nose. She cannot banish the memory of his chafed hands and gaunt face from her mind, even as she is ushered into a little room and given a cold glass of water to drink.

Pagan encourages her to sit and rest, hovering around her like a worried mother bird. The smells and the marks aren’t the worst part. Not by half. The worst is his kindness, his gentleness, shattered by the reminders of the bloodstains on the floor and the sickly smell of copper.

 _Mohan was right_ , she chides herself. _Mohan is_ always _right. Why didn’t you believe him? Why did you doubt? His_ wrists.

She shudders and takes a long chug of water, scrubbing at her eyes with the heel of her hand. The water washes away the taste of bile and she sits there savoring its coolness, her elbows resting on the sheet-metal table not unlike the one in the cell.

“You did so well,” Pagan coos at her, stroking her hand, her hair. He’s kneeling beside her, his eyes frantic with worry. She shakes her head and says nothing. She can’t look at him now. She doesn’t want to see the concern written into his face.

_Please, Pagan, just let it be. Don’t make me look at you._

He senses her need to be alone and gets up to talk to Lang, who is standing outside having a cigarette. She is left alone with her glass of water and her thoughts, which she forces into silence before they consume her entirely. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have lunch.

By the time they get back to the helicopter, the water has washed the taste of the vomit from her mouth, but the vile taste of her words to the prisoner remains. The nausea has vanished, leaving only a gnawing hunger and a deep, weighty self-hatred in her gut. She has betrayed the Golden Path, betrayed her people, but she has kept her cover and strengthened the illusion. She can’t decide whether or not it’s worth it. Her gut certainly doesn’t seem to think so.

Pagan helps her strap in again and then sits and looks at her carefully. “Ishwari,” he begins, and she flinches at the sound of his voice. “I know you hated what you saw today, but you’ve done a very noble thing. I just want you to know that.”

She can’t respond. She has no idea of what to say. Instead, she turns and looks out the window. Pagan shouts an order up to Lang in Cantonese, and they lift off.

Ishwari’s stomach pangs with hunger and she suddenly remembers that she hasn’t eaten all day after dropping the croissant. Now her stomach is doubly empty. She keeps silent, trying to ignore it, and eventually, from sheer exhaustion, she drops into a half-doze. It is fretful and restless and haunted with shackles and moaning doors. She is following a white-haired demon down an endless hallway, staring at his silk jacket.

She jerks away as the helicopter lands, but with one glance it’s clear that they’re not back at the palace. Instead, the helicopter has settled on a large, open plaza in front of an ancient belltower. It is starting to go a little to rot, but still stands proud, gold and red paint gleaming. Around the tower are grouped some houses, occupied by Kyrati citizens and a couple soldiers. The monks normally occupying the belltower seem to have dispersed.

The royal guards that exit from the helicopter force the citizens to disperse into their homes as well, giving the king free run of the place. Only one woman is kept behind and told to whip something up in her kitchen. A guard enters to supervise her cooking and the rest of them take up advantageous positions around the tiny half-village.

Ishwari doesn’t bother to ask why, or protest, or even wonder. Her mind is too exhausted by all she’s seen that morning, and the troubled sleep didn’t help in the least.

“This is a beautiful little area,” Pagan tells her as they sit down at a little stone table in the square. “I was obliged to make a pit-stop here a little while ago, and I discovered they have the best view, not to mention the best home cooking.”

The woman brings out some flatbread, her head bowed in deference and hands trembling in fear should the king dislike it. Ishwari wolfs it down hungrily. By the time the roasted goat meat and vegetables come out, she’s feeling a little heartier, and to Pagan’s obvious relief, she finally finds the strength to begin responding to him with at least an ounce of civility.

“Why _chain_ him, though?” She demands as they mop up the lamb juices with the remaining flatbread. “There’s no need. Reason is what convinced him in the end, not the chains or that horrible room.”

Pagan frowns and takes a bite of bread. “Some men have to be broken, Ishwari. As well as you did, the way had to be paved.”

Ishwari sighs. With food in her belly and the horrors of the morning left far behind across the valley, she’s finally able to think without her heart shuddering. The afternoon sun is warm on her shoulders and the air is cool on her brow. Before them, they can see Kyrat’s hills rolling green. “Next time,” she tells him firmly, “if you put your faith in me, you must really do so. Allow me to try and sway them without your…paving. Without violence.”

Pagan sits back on his stool and wipes his mouth with another little lavender handkerchief, looking at her dubiously. “That will be a challenge for both of us,” he says, his voice dry.

“I’m up to it if you are.”

_Do it for Sandeep. Do it for his flesh. For his children. Do it so nobody else is imprisoned like that. Dance to whatever tune Pagan sings so long as nobody else has to be shackled._

Pagan stands and offers Ishwari his arm. “Let’s take a walk,” he suggests. “You can see things even better from the rim of the butte.”

She obliges him. His arm is strong and warm and the silk is smooth against her bare arm.

 _What kind of man dresses like a movie star but keeps his fellow humans in dark cells, beneath the earth?_ A monster, Mohan called him, and she’s beginning to truly believe it. And yet, she cannot help but enjoy – truly enjoy – Pagan’s presence. He is a gentleman and he is funny and kind and his eyes shine like a little boy’s when he is excited.

He leads her around the houses and Ishwari finds herself standing right over a little canyon, looking northeast. The belltower and accompanying buildings are built on a free-standing, fat pillar of stone cut off from the surrounding cliffs from a wide, rippling canyon that carves a confused circle around them. Behind them are the cliffs, before them the hills of Kyrat, and beyond them, lavender against the grey-blue sky, are more mountains, capped with glittering snow.

“You understand the heart of your people,” Pagan murmurs after some time. “I cannot grasp that.”

“How can I not understand them? I am one of them. I am not like you, Pagan. I was born onto a dirt floor and I’ve never truly left it. My whole life is Kyrat. She is all I know.”

“You will always know her better than I.”

“You could too, if you tried. If you cared to try, rather than locking her people up in cells. My people.”

He says nothing to that, and she turns to look up at him in curiosity, only to find him gazing down at her with a subdued, reflective look on his face, though his eyes are burning like coals.

Suddenly, he is kissing her, his long eyelashes brushing against her cheeks and his lips fluttering feather-light against hers, tentative and chaste and ever-so-reserved.

 _His mouth is so warm_ , she thinks, and she almost allows herself to kiss him back – _it’s been so long_ – but instead she stumbles back, staring at him like a startled deer.

He looks at her in surprise, one hand still out, holding the air where she was standing.

 _He is a monster. He is a_ monster.

She turns wordlessly and walks back to the helicopter, scrubbing at her mouth with the back of her arm, leaving Pagan standing behind her on the cliff’s edge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two little vignettes tonight! I'm posting the chapters as I wrote them while on a trip over the weekend. The next chapter should be transcribed and uploaded in the morning! Now these two are getting somewhere. ;)
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She makes her choice.

The helicopter ride home is a silent one. Ishwari’s heart is thumping so fast, she’s sure he’ll turn from looking out the window to yell at her, kiss her again, or throw her out the door to plummet to the earth. He does nothing. They land safely and he gets out and goes into the palace without another glance at her. She feels almost grateful for it.

She spends the rest of the day in her room, debating whether or not to send a servant to tell Pagan that she won’t be coming down to dinner. The decision ends up being made for her: a maid brings dinner to her room, informing her that there will be no meal in the dining room tonight. Her heart sinks at the news.

 _He must really be furious with me_ , she thinks as she sits at her little table and sips at her miso soup. _How am I ever going to repair this? Wonderful job, Ishwari, you’ve botched things completely just as you were really getting somewhere._

But then again, what right does he have? What right to be angry with her after surprising her like _that_?

 _It’s not fair that he should act like this when he doesn’t get his way_ , she grumbles internally. Then she reminds herself immediately: _well, he_ is _the king. He’s probably not used to not having his way._

She spends the whole evening in her room, and the hours are a torment. She can’t help but replay, over and over, the feeling of his lips on hers, the fire in his eyes, the words he’d said…he wants her, of course, but what to do with this? Is she the kind of woman to exploit this? To cheat on Mohan in order to keep the king close?

 _What_ about _Mohan? Did he know this would happen? He must have. He and Pagan worked side by side for so long…he must have known what Pagan would do. What Pagan would want._

The thought makes her shudder. Her skin is crawling, and she suddenly feels as if there’s grime all over her hands. Rage rises like bile in the back of her throat and burns a hole in the pit of her chest, and she quickly goes into the bathroom to run water into the tub. She strips down and settles into the tub, scrubbing at everything from the bottoms of her feet to under her fingernails. Nothing works. She can’t stop thinking about Mohan, about his intentions, about what he must have decided to do with his wife. She’s given him a son, hasn’t she? And now he is putting her to her next use. The thought makes her want to vomit again, and she covers her face with her hands and sinks down into the water.

_Mohan is testing me, too. Testing my resolve to fight for the cause. Testing my faithfulness to the Golden Path, to all his plans, by making me sacrifice everything. My son. My faithfulness to him. He is stripping me down to see the truth of me._

Before she knows it, she’s crying. She hasn’t cried in so long. She can’t remember the last time. It comes out in big, guttural sobs that shake her whole body. She’s shaking like a possessed girl being exorcised and the tears and mucus are leaking down her face to mix with the bathwater. All she can hear is the echoes of her own sobbing off the tiled walls.

 _He’s willing to make his wife go and…_ be _with the enemy, just for a road in. He’s more concerned about what I’ll do for the Golden Path than what I’ll do for my marriage._

The rage wells up in her chest again, burning and tightening and quenching the tears with anger and heat. How dare he? She’d loved him so much. She’d never dreamt, in all her years, of being unfaithful to him, even in their worst fights. But now he is whoring her out – his own wife, mother of his child! – for the chance to have a spy at the king’s breast.

This must be what he wanted all along. This is his test. This is a trial of her fortitude, her dedication to Kyrat, her dedication to her husband’s ideals over her dedication to her marriage bed.

What now?

Ishwari gets out of the tub and dries off, telling herself to put it away for now, to let it rest until tomorrow, when she’ll probably see Pagan again. She’ll think better in daylight, anyway.

_I think I can do this. I think I can do this for Mohan. For Ajay. For Kyrat. But…gods, I’m not sure I can. No, Ishwari, let it go for now. It’ll be easier to find strength in the morning. Don’t decide now._

She puts on her pajamas and crawls into bed, her limbs aching with exhaustion from the day’s tension. She’s so tired that sleep eludes her, exhaustion frying her mind and pushing sleep away. She tosses and turns under the thick duvet, trying to find a comfortable position, trying to let herself drift off, but nothing works. Sleep is her enemy. She finds herself staring up at the ceiling as the clock chimes midnight, touching her lips lightly.

 _It’s not that he’s a bad kisser, and gods, it’s been so long_. Mohan hasn’t touched her in months, not since she became too big to lie comfortably on her back beneath him. It was around that time that things got bad, anyway. She got angry, a trapped, pregnant animal. He got bitter. And then, after Ajay was born, she was so sore and tired, and he immediately shipped her off to the palace…

She slips a hand between her legs and presses two of her fingers within herself, but it doesn’t seem to work. It’s different when it’s just her hands, not Mohan himself. With a sigh, Ishwari sits up and slips on a robe and slippers before tiptoeing out the door.

The palace is silent as the grave at this time of night, and she’s sure that everyone can hear the creaking of her feet on the wooden steps. Nobody stirs. She creeps down through the thick darkness and exits out into the courtyard, breathing deep of the crisp, cool air. The stars twinkle overhead and the moon is out, shining bright at half-full. Ishwari shivers in the cold night air, pulling her robe tighter about her. It’s so strange, this time of the year, that there’s no snow. At least the ground is clear for her slippered feet.

She goes to the edge of the courtyard and looks down. Through the thick brush, far below, she can see the twinkle of a fortress that never sleeps. Beyond that there is darkness, permeated only by the occasional tiny cluster of lights. She feels alone on the mountain. Even the bats that live in the Kyrati mountains have all gone into hibernation. She looks south toward her home, but there’s only the distant darkness where starlight is cut off by black mountaintops.

“You can’t sleep either?”

Ishwari nearly jumps out of her skin and turns swiftly to see Pagan, shivering himself in a long smoking jacket, his silvery-gold hair dimly reflecting moonlight.

“No.”

“Good.”

“You are cruel,” she snaps.

“For what? Torturing your people, or kissing you, or hoping you don’t get a wink of sleep afterward?”

“All three.”

“Well, you’re plenty cruel on your own,” he grumbles, standing beside her to look over the dark valley.

“Me? What in the world did _I_ do?” She stares up at him, halfway between incredulous and indignant, the hairs on the back of her neck rising.

“You walked away!” He barks, and her back stiffens. This is the first time he’s ever raised his voice to her. “Do you realize how hard it is to talk to you? All my life, I’ve been able to talk to people, but you come along and I find myself planning out all my words like a fucking script, nervous like a fourteen year old boy. And what kind of person, may I ask, just _walks away_ when they’ve been kissed?”

“So that’s it,” she replies icily. “You’re just a spoiled little boy who’s been handed all he wants in life, and for once, when you don’t get your way, you throw a fit.”

She can’t see it in the dark, but she knows Pagan’s face must be reddening with anger. He’s at a loss for words for a while, and finally manages to hiss, his voice strangled, “You cruel _bitch_.”

She has nothing more to say to him. She turns and begins walking back toward the palace.

“Don’t!” he orders, but then his voice softens. “Please. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…I’m sorry. Please, just stay a while. I can’t stand this, Ishwari.”

She stops and stands, silent, and then turns to look up at him. She can barely see his eyes, glittering in the starlight.

“I’m so sorry,” he repeats. “You’re right.”

She makes her decision. Closing the distance between them, she stands on her tiptoes and pulls him down by the lapels of his smoking jacket and presses her lips to his. The moment their lips touch, he moans into her mouth like a man famished, sliding his arms around her as if they’ve always belonged there. When she opens her mouth to let him in, he takes the invitation without hesitation, sliding his tongue between her lips and tangling it with hers. He lets out another strangled little groan as he does, and they stumble, not letting go of one another, to the wall of the palace. He’s pressing her back up against the wall until her feet leave the ground, wrapping her legs around his waist. She clings desperately to his shoulders, half-terrified, but her mind is fogged and his lips are so warm and gentle and hungry. Hungry for her. Hungrier than Mohan has ever been.

His hot breath steams against her lips and cheeks in the frigid air and she feels she’ll nearly die, it’s so good to kiss someone again, even if he is a demon with bloodstained hands. She can’t bring herself to care. His chest is warm and broad and his arms are enveloping her and it’s been ages and ages since anyone has held her like this. She loops her arms around his shoulders and buries her hands in his feathery gold hair, and he lets out another little groan of pleasure as her nails scrape against the back of his neck.

As they kiss, his hips move against hers, and she can feel her nightgown beginning to ride up her thighs. At first she doesn’t mind, and her hips begin to fall into a rhythm with his, rubbing against him instinctively. Then, something happens – a little sigh exits her lips, her hands brush against his ears, he breathes deep – and something hard twitches against her crotch. _Not yet. Please, not just yet. I can’t do this yet._

She stops, pulls back, panting, and very carefully disentangles herself from him and lowers herself to the ground.

“I should get some sleep,” she says gently. He stares fire down at her and makes a choked noise in the back of his throat.

“Right,” he says carefully, straightening his robe and running a hand through his hair.

“Thank you,” she says gently. “For understanding.”

“Right,” he repeats.

“Goodnight.” She stands on her tiptoes, about to peck him on the lips, but decides otherwise and pecks him on the cheek instead. Without another word, she turns and goes into the palace. As she closes her door, she hears his footsteps in the hall and the distant noise of his own door closing.

The decision is made. Tomorrow she will awake and fall into a new stage in her role.

 _I’m sorry, mama_ , she thinks weakly as sleep takes her. _I had to choose. I choose Kyrat._


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have breakfast.

 She wakes up slowly the next morning. For a while, she just lies under her thick, warm covers, her eyes closed. The sunlight is muted, and outside she can hear the muffled crunch of soldier’s boots on pavement.

 _It’s snowed_ , she thinks.

Eventually, she opens her eyes and stares at the ceiling, thinking of what’s happened. She can still feel the pressure of Pagan’s lips on hers, the warmth of his chest, the grinding of his hips. A shot of heat ripples down into her loins and she tightens her jaw at the feeling. She can’t deny that it happened, though – not now, not last night, when she got back to her room and went to bed while trying to ignore the dampness between her legs.

And anyway, it’s not worth ignoring now. There’s no going back. She might as well face up to things.

Sighing, Ishwari sits up and slides one leg out of bed, wincing when her toes hit the cold floor. Her feet search blindly for her slippers until she finds them, and she pulls on the robe that she left draped carelessly over her bedpost the night before. It’s far colder now than it was last night. She shivers and pulls the robe tighter around her, shuffling over to the little woodstove to light a fire.

It’s then that she notices the piece of paper sticking out of her robe pocket. She pulls it out, and her heart stops. A letter from Mohan.

 _Chesa must have been in here and left it for me while I was asleep._ She opens it quickly and pours over it.

_Ishwari –_

_I have no further news of Ajay for now. He is well, though he has a bit of colic. I would give you a picture of us, but it is too dangerous. Please, try to keep your focus. I have sent you to spy on Pagan. From what you tell me, he seems to enjoy your company. Perhaps it is even something more. Use that. Throw yourself into that. I believe in you, in your ability._

_Mohan_

Ishwari stares at the letter, reads it twice over.

 _Well, fine. He really does want this_. She sinks onto the little couch at the end of her bed and puts her hands in her lap. She doesn’t feel surprised; she doesn’t feel much of anything now. It’s too late, anyway. Even if Mohan had told her not to go to Pagan’s bed, it would be far too late for that now.

All that really hurts is that Mohan won’t give her that picture. She knows full well that he has good reasons, but gods, it still feels like nothing but a punishment. Well. She can’t reply to him now; Chesa’s gone already and won’t be back for a few more days.

She tears the letter into tiny shreds and tosses it into the woodstove and begins to build a fire.

 

Ishwari takes a little time to sit in front of the fire and drink some tea before she feels calm enough again to dress and go down to breakfast, though by now it may as well be called lunch. She dons the warmest dress in her ward-robe and a pair of thick woolen socks before going down, grateful that Pagan generally eats in his own room. She’ll have a little while longer to sit and think about how to approach him, how to deal with him.

She opens the door to the dining room, and her heart sinks, because there he sits, wearing makeup to cover up the bags in his eyes, hair pristinely styled, glimmering in white-and-gold brocade. He looks up when she enters and jumps to his feet, an excited smile lighting up his face.

“Ishwari! Good morning! I hope you’re hungry; they’ve made us a big brunch today.”

She stands there in the doorway until she remembers to smile graciously and approach the table. Pagan pulls a chair out for her and immediately begins heaping her plate with sausages and toast and a strange, cake-like food made of what looks like egg and some kind of vegetable.

“Eat up!” he tells her, digging back in himself. She does her best, but she just can’t seem to do much damage to her plate. The knowledge of what she’s started – what’s coming next – weighs on her like lead. Despite that, she somehow manages to smile and laugh whenever he says something witty.

“Listen,” he says after a while, “we’re going to spend the day up in my favorite cabin. I thought it might be nice to really get away and have a day out. No nasty business this time, hm?”

Her heart stops, and her fork trembles in the air as she carefully sets it down on her plate. “That would be wonderful,” she tells him, smiling again, though it feels more forced than ever. _So this is how he means to seduce me_ , she thinks to herself. _A romantic escape. Well, at least he’s being a gentleman about it._

Considering she’s already fated to be his lover, she supposes she can’t ask for more.

“Great. I’ve already informed the staff, and they’ve gone ahead to prepare it for us. We’ll go up as soon as you’re done eating.”

She laughs. “Well, I guess I’m done anyway. I’m not terribly hungry.”

“Well, then!” He stands, but then sits down again and looks at her intently, reaching out and placing one hand on her knee. “Ishwari, if you’d prefer-”

She leans forward and presses her lips briefly to his. She can’t afford to let him doubt, to let him waver, to let him wonder. “I’d prefer to go to your cabin.”

He grins in relief. “Good. Splendid. I…well, why don’t you go get together all you need. I’ll send a maid up with a suitcase for you.”

“Are we staying overnight?” She asks as innocently as possible. _Of course we are_.

“Well, yes, there’s no point in going up just to come down again. Bring one or two days’ worth of clothes, and meet me at the car.”

He stands again, all nervous energy, but pauses and stoops down, lifting her chin and pressing his lips to hers, sighing softly in contentment when she favors him and kisses him back.

“Thank you,” he murmurs to her when he pulls back. “I’m…I’m so glad last night wasn’t a fluke.”

“Why would it be?”

He pulls back and looks down at her, one hand leaning on the corner of the table. He shrugs one shoulder. “No reason. I’m just very glad you want what I do.”

“Well, I didn’t really know I did until late last night.” It’s only a half-lie.

“In that case, I’m glad I ran into you before you had the chance to change your mind.”

“What made you think I was going to change my mind?”

“Well, the walking away without a word the first time I kissed you did it well enough.”

“You’re still mad about that?”

He sighs and his lips quirk up in a little smile. “Well, it _was_ rather rude, Ishwari, but no, I’m not mad. Not anymore.”

“Good,” she says, and stands, pecking him on the cheek like she did the night before. “You have no reason to be.” At that, she turns and leaves to go upstairs and pack, relief pouring through every muscle. She cannot let him have any sort of advantage over her, but staying one step ahead of him has always been hard, and now that she’s goaded him on, it’s only getting harder. He’s too eager, too excitable, like a hair trigger on a gun. A touch too much and he’ll go off, exploding out of her control, but she dares not back away either.

She returns to her room and picks out clothes, choosing warm and cozy – but still attractive – dresses. The difficulty comes in choosing underwear. Pagan has given her simple but well-made, elegant panties and bras for her wardrobe. There’s nothing too sultry or seductive, but she picks out the best-looking pieces and places them gently into the suitcases with her dresses. She also chooses a fresh nightgown – one that’s a bit sheer around the edges – wondering whether or not she’ll even get a chance to wear it. Her heart flutters at the thought and the warmth from last night shoots down into her groin again. Her palms are sweaty as she folds the nightgown and places it loosely in the suitcase.

 _Gods, preserve me_ , _I'm really doing this,_ she prays, zipping it up. _Gods, I_ have _to do this. Protect me. Please, please protect me._


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They take a car ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strap in, kids, it's about to get smutty.

 The road up to the cabin is coated with snow, but Pagan’s armored car – long and black – has been fitted with great iron chains on the tires. They travel in caravan, flanked in front and back by jeeps equipped with machine guns and fully-armed guards. Two guardsmen sit in the front of Pagan’s car, too, one driving and the other sitting shotgun, a semi-automatic resting in his lap. The car is fitted with darkened bulletproof glass, and there’s yet another wall of bulletproof glass between the front seats and the rest of the car interior.

The inside is carpeted in black and the seats are covered in black leather. There are even little lights along the floor and roof to light the darkened interior. Unlike in a normal car, the seats are along one side and a strange ledge is along the other. Out of curiosity, Ishwari opens a little door built into the ledge and finds that it’s a little refrigerator, filled with tiny bottles of alcohol, mixers, chilled tumblers, and even a lime. She looks at Pagan, a brow raised, and he can’t help but laugh.

“This is hardly lavish. There are limousines twice this long in the West. Some are even equipped with hot tubs.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have one of those instead.”

“I would, but I could hardly use it on these mountains.” He takes out a bottle of scotch and pours it into two of the chilled glasses, handing one to her. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” she murmurs in return, clinking her glass against his, and takes a sip. He’s given her alcohol before, but this kind always makes her choke a little. She barely ever drank growing up except for a little wine now and again during palace dinners. It’s hard to get used to something this strong. The bitterness makes her wince and it makes the back of her throat burn, but she does like the way it slides down into her core and nests there like a hot coal, warming her from the inside out.

They finish their drinks in an unusual silence. Pagan, despite his best efforts, is drooping, his eyelids heavy. He keeps his left hand on her thigh, rubbing it gently with his thumb, but he remains quiet.

“Didn’t you sleep last night?” She asks eventually.

He snorts. “After all _that_?”

She sighs and takes his glass from him, putting both tumblers into the built-in cup-holders. “Get some sleep on the way, then.”

He smirks. “Are you going to be my mother now, Ishwari?”

“If I must. Who else is going to be sure you take care of yourself? Anyway, it won’t do to have you exhausted for what’s supposed to be a vacation.”

“Well, if you promise not to be irritated with me for being bad company.”

“I promise. Sleep.”

He smiles at her and leans his head on the back of the seat, watching her drowsily until his eyelids flutter closed. After a while, his breathing slows and evens. Ishwari sits and waits, watching him carefully, and then places a hand softly on his leg. Nothing. He’s asleep. Her own breathing relaxes a little and she slumps into the cushion herself, allowing her muscles to loosen and droop out of her normal, composed posture.

She can’t help but value the silence, knowing it might be the last for a while. She just simply doesn’t have his stamina for interaction, especially when she already got so little sleep herself. He can talk endlessly, and it’s not that she dislikes it, but she’s sure she’ll barely have any time to herself to unwind in the next couple of days. She’s going to be constantly on her toes, no hours alone in the library to allow herself to relax without worrying how Pagan is looking at her, listening to her, evaluating her with those ever-sharp eyes. This is her last little break before he occupies her whole existence.

Ishwari looks at him, at his soft, boyish face, so peaceful in sleep. He looks far too young to be a king, far too young to run ghastly prisons whose drainpipes run red and whose deepest corners stink of rotten flesh.

She reaches up to adjust her hair, and her fingers brush against the long hairpin stuck through the base of her bun. It’s sharp enough at the tip; with enough force, she could bury it deep in his throat.

She glances at the soldiers up front. The man in the shotgun seat meets her eyes in the review mirror briefly before looking back out the front window. She could kill Pagan here and now, end everything without defiling her marriage vows. She would die immediately, of course, never to see Ajay or Mohan ever again, but she would die loyal to her marriage. The Golden Path would make her a martyr, and the Tarun Matara would be reincarnated into even greater glory.

Ishwari pulls the pin from her hair, letting her black locks fall loose about her shoulders. She sets the long, silver length of it in her lap, running one finger along the cool metal. Taking a deep breath, she tightens her hand around it and looks at Pagan. His soft pink lips are turned up in the barest hint of a smile as he sleeps, his hand still resting loose on her leg.

She takes a deep, shaky breath. Then another.

Eventually, her hands stop shaking, and she can put her hair back into its prim bun, sliding the hairpin back into place.

 --

She spends most of the rest of the trip gazing out the window, drinking in the steep cliffs and plunging valleys. The snow is still falling in flurries, but the sun is out now, and the glare hits the snow and nearly blinds her at times.

The next thing she knows, the sun is further down in the sky and her head is on Pagan’s shoulder.

 _I must have dozed off, too_ , she realizes, sitting up quickly and stretching her cramped limbs, trying to hide her blushing.

“We’re nearly there,” Pagan says beside her. He’s awake and looks far more rested than he was before, his muscles relaxed and his eyes bright. An open magazine is lying on his lap.

“Good. I need to move around a bit.”

“We can stop, if you like.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I can wait.”

“You must have been pretty tired yourself.”

“I guess I was.” She glances at the article he’s opened in the magazine. There are glossy photos showing glamorously-dressed white women, tall and slim with perfectly-stylized hair. Their nails are long and their makeup is sharp and haunting, their painted lips open just slightly, oozing sex and promises.

“I’m glad you got some sleep, too.” Pagan closes the magazine and tosses it to the side. VOGUE, the cover proclaims, and Ishwari wonders distantly what in the world that’s supposed to mean. _It doesn’t sound like an English word._

Then Pagan’s lips are against her ear, his voice dropped low. “I’m going to keep you up all night.”

Ishwari feels her face burning again. His hand is back on her thigh, moving upward to her hip. She glances at his face, sees the smug smile on his lips, and spits out: “I’m fairly sure that’s something _I_ do.” She can’t help it: her lips curl into a mean little smile.

In response, he grabs her by the jaw and crushes his face against hers. His lips are hungry and bruising and something in her loves it because that shock of heat goes straight to her groin again.

“I hate you sometimes,” she hisses when he finally lets her pull away for a breath, and it’s not a lie. She hates him right now, hates how she didn’t bury the hair pin in his jugular when she had the chance, hates how she’s grateful that she didn’t. She hates the burning in her core, because it’s making her kiss him again, her tongue sliding against his, drinking in the sweet, spicy taste of him. The smell of cloves fills her nose and she lets out a gasp and a little yelp as he yanks up the hem of her dress and slides a hand up her bare brown leg.

“You wanted to move around a bit, didn’t you?” He growls at her, his lips curling cruelly.

“What about _them_?” She gives fleeting look to the front of the car, her fingers digging into his shirt.

“Who cares?” He mutters, his voice thick, and she draws in a sharp breath as he nips at her neck. The heat is stronger now, spreading through her whole body from a concentrated, pulsing burn at the very center of her womanhood. He begins kissing her again, and the taste of him is a drug, dimming any concern she might have about being watched.

She breaks the kiss again to cry out in surprise when he pulls her onto his lap. His hand has found its way to her ass under her dress, cupping her bare flesh, his long fingers tracing the line of her panties. When he finally beings to tug them down by the waistband, she’s jerked out of her haze into remembering that she’s supposed to be trying to keep pace with him, keeping him from getting beyond what she can control. She needs to match him move for move or be left behind, a helpless victim to his lust.

She wrenches his belt open, and her clumsy fingers find the zipper of his trousers. When she slides her little hand inside, he breaks their kiss, gasping like a half-drowned man and rocking his head back on the seat cushion. She stretches her neck to scatter kisses up his throat, his pulse beneath her lips, as she worms her fingers beneath the silk of his briefs to find him already half-hard. The moment she touches him, it somehow becomes real: this is not something she can come back from.

She doesn’t hesitate. She’s in too deep to pause and ponder it. Her fingers wrap around him. She knows the movements – she’s done this before, a treat for her stressed husband – but what she’s not expecting is his reciprocation.

Pagan pulls her panties down to her knees with a violent jerk, nearly ripping them in the process, and presses his fingers between her legs. It’s such a shock that she lets out a loud, humiliating _mewl_ like some sort of farm-cat in heat. In her hand, his cock twitches, rock-hard now, a drop of liquid seeping from the tip.

They’re in a race now: she’s doing her best to remember what she learned when she did this for Mohan, her fingers tightening and loosening as she slides her hand up and down the length of him. She suddenly remembers something her husband especially liked, and circles the pad of her thumb over the tip, dragging a groan of need out of Pagan.

In all fairness, he’s making it terribly difficult for her to remember anything. He’s stroking around and up and down between her lower lips, slipping his fingers between the folds of her. His index finger rubs against a place right in front that makes her gasp noiselessly. It feels like she’s just touched a live wire and it’s so powerful that it’s almost painful.

Pagan grins at her, his eyes triumphant, and he doubles his efforts, working that little spot until she can no longer even try to keep up with him, she’s so horribly distracted. Her hips are rocking against his hand automatically and the pressure inside her just keeps building and building until she’s sobbing for it to please end, please be over, she can’t take it anymore, just make it stop before she dies. Her legs begin shaking uncontrollably like she’s having a seizure and then she’s howling, her back arching so violently that Pagan has to wrap his arms around her waist to keep her from falling off his lap. He swivels her around to lie her down on the seat, her limbs still twitching beyond her control like she’s been electrocuted.

As she lies there trying to get her bearings, he slides her panties all the way off and presses his cock into them, stroking them up and down his length until he lets out a loud moan of ecstasy of his own, his hips jerking forward into his hand. Ishwari can only lie there, trying to catch her breath, her muscles turned to pudding. There is wetness between her thighs, dripping onto the seat. Her dress is hiked up around her waist, leaving her completely exposed, but she’s too dazed to care, the euphoria of what’s just happened still clinging to her like a cloud of opium. In the front, she can see the eyes of the guards are carefully averted.

Pagan uses her panties to wipe himself off and then drops them, crumpled and soiled, to the floor. Zipping up his trousers, he leans down to give her a long, languorous kiss.

“I have to say, I wasn’t...really expecting that from you,” he tells her.

“Neither was I,” she admits, her voice faint, and it's entirely the truth.

He gives her another peck, and gently pulls her dress back down to where it belongs, smoothing the fabric out carefully. “You never cease to be full of surprises, Ishwari.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we've officially reached a new level for these two! Keep tuned, there's more to come. As always, thanks for reading!


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They go to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning: this chapter is even smuttier and more graphic than the last. Proceed at your own discretion.

The rest of the ride (which isn't all that much), Ishwari lies on the seat, half-dazed, euphoria still clinging to her. Her feet are in Pagan’s lap, and he rubs them distractedly, gazing through hooded eyes at her, a look of lust mixed with utter satisfaction on his face. He seems to be in a bit of a doze himself, his thumbs tracing little circles on her wool-covered ankles.

When they arrive, the guard blushes when he helps Ishwari out of the car, refusing to look her in the face.

 _Gods_ , she thinks, _he must have seen everything. Or heard it, anyway_. She and Pagan had hardly been discreet. At least her legs aren’t shaking anymore now, and she can hold herself in perfect composure, despite the embarrassing reality that she is utterly bare beneath her dress. Her panties are still lying, crumpled and soiled with cum, on the floor of the car.

Pagan seems utterly unfazed by what’s happened, and she can’t help but wonder how many women have been in that car. He’s certainly well practiced, though she’s not complaining there. In all the years of making love to Mohan, she’s never experienced anything quite like _that_. She’d enjoyed making love to Mohan, of course, but they’d only ever known each other, and admittedly they’d stuck to what they knew. Mohan had brought her to orgasm, certainly, but he’d never ripped one out of her as violently or insistently as Pagan just has. He’d never made her beg like…well, like a _whore_.

She’s lost in her reflections when she feels Pagan’s hand on her hip, his fingers smoothing over the area where her panties aren’t, and she can tell he’s enjoying the knowledge that she’s totally naked beneath her dress. “The cabin is just down this path,” he tells her, and just then she sees where three servants emerge from between the trees to fetch the luggage. Pagan grabs Ishwari’s hand, linking his fingers with hers like a boyfriend, and leads the way.

The path isn’t long at all, though the thick patch of trees blocks the view of the cabin from the road completely. They quickly emerge into a wide clearing up against cliff. On the very edge rests the cabin, looking out over a deep, plunging valley. From the north flows a river that runs beneath the building and plummets over the edge; Ishwari can hear the roar of the falls from here. In truth, the building is far more than a cabin: it’s huge, all smooth white walls, angled strangely, paneled with giant panes of glass that gleam bright in the sun. There’s a smaller building to the side: servant’s quarters, naturally.

“I just had this place built barely a year ago. I’ve hardly had time to come here, though.”

“It’s amazing,” she breathes. She’s never seen a building like this, not even in pictures.

“Thanks. I told my architect to get a bit Frank Lloyd Wright with it.”

Ishwari says nothing. It’s always embarrassing, when he says things like this, expecting her to know what he’s talking about and forgetting that she won’t. She feels like every time it happens, it suddenly reveals yet another big open hole in her knowledge. She knows Napoleon, but not this Frank person, just as she knows the names of the planets but not the exact location of England. Her education got cut off so early, and every day with him is a reminder of it. On her mountain with her family, none of that mattered, but next to this man who wears perfume and leather shoes, she’s scrambling to remember everything her old tutor ever said to her.

Pagan doesn’t seem to notice her awkward silence. “Come on, let’s get inside and get warmed up. Look, there’s already smoke coming out of the chimney. They’re probably working on a meal.”

The inside takes Ishwari’s breath away all over again. To the left of the entrance there is a sunken level with a fireplace and couches and the biggest TV Ishwari’s ever imagined. In the corner, built up against two huge panes of glass and looking out over the green valley, is a hot tub built directly into the floor. To the right is a large dining area and a hallway down which is drifting a delicious smell. There’s also a staircase going up, and each white step looks almost like it’s floating independent of the floor.

“Down that way is the kitchen and guest rooms,” Pagan waves his arm in the general direction of the hall.

“And upstairs?”

He winks at her. “The master bedroom, naturally.”

Ishwari swallows and smiles weakly, trying to ignore the thrill that jolts down her spine to her core. She was expecting dread, but now the dread is gone: there’s just that nervous, fluttery anticipation she remembers distantly from her wedding night, sitting on the bed in her pretty red dress and waiting for her new husband. The wedding had been an agony, but by the time the feast was over, the fear had drained away, leaving only a strange sense of standing on a precipice and the desire to let herself fall.

 _You’ve already fallen, Ishwari_ , she tells herself, thinking of the panties she left behind. _Stop acting like an overeager bride. You’re falling, now take him down with you._

“When will dinner be ready?” She asks, smiling at him as demurely as she can. “I’m rather hungry.”

Pagan goes to check himself, giving Ishwari the chance to fix her hair and quickly fix her makeup. When he comes back, he finds her sitting on the couch, relaxed but composed, leaning in relaxation against the arm, her feet tucked up under her.

“It’s nearly ready to put on the table.”

“Wonderful; I’m starving after that ride.” She smiles at him and Pagan can’t help but grin back at her, looking more than pleased with himself. She pats the cushion next to her and he sits down, brimming with energy, and when she kisses him he plunges into it. They kiss deeply for a while, but she keeps him carefully in check, stilling his hands when they move toward her breasts or her ass. He allows her to direct him, but she can feel the frustration in his lips, the desire to drag her up that staircase behind them. Distantly, she can hear the servants in the dining room setting the table, and she pulls back, pecking him on his lips and then his cheeks and leaving Pagan looking like a man rudely awoken just as he’d fallen into a doze.

“Let’s eat,” she tells him, and stands, smoothing her skirt and leaving him looking quite interrupted.

 

In truth, they barely sit at the table at all. Within minutes of being served, Ishwari finds her own patience has run out. Pagan has awakened something in her that has been dormant for so long, and now all she wants is for her world to be shaken to its foundations again. Looking at him where he sits beside her, with his ridiculous blonde hair and painted eyes and slim waist and long legs, the fear she’s felt is gone, replaced only with a deep hunger that would unsettle her if it wasn’t so strong. Her body has gone empty and hollow for so long, preoccupied only with the baby, but now something has come very violently back from the grave, life breathed back into what she once had with Mohan.

Only now it isn’t Mohan anymore.

Mohan is her beloved husband, father of her child, love of her life. He has known her deeper and better than anyone in this world outside of her own mother. He has been her only true companion for six long years. And now her body has forgotten him, replaced him with the tyrant who sits beside her with bloodstained hands – hands that just violently robbed something from her spouse.

_No, no. Don’t blame Pagan for this. This is you. This is Mohan. He has sent you to this and you have accepted your mission._

And, after all, the body that is burning now is really only a body. It will wither and die someday, and so will this horrible new want for a monster’s touch.

She’s out of patience for this stupid game. She reaches under the table and takes Pagan’s free hand, guiding it under her dress and up her leg as she keeps her eyes locked on his.

Pagan drops his fork and grabs her, kissing her and picking her up so hastily that he upsets her glass of water where it sits on the table. She hears glass shatter but neither of them care; he’s already halfway up the stairs with her in his arms

The entire second floor turns out to be one great, open loft overlooking the sunken living room level. She barely has time to look around before Pagan slams her on the bed so hard she nearly loses her breath. Pagan is on her immediately, pinning her wrists above her head as he kisses her furiously. She wraps her legs around his waist, her skirt slipping down so that her bare sex is grinding against the silk of his trousers. She feels strangely possessed, all youthful eagerness, excited and clumsy as if doing this for the first time.

He’s grinding back and she can feel the hardness of him beneath the fabric. He frees her wrists so he can loosen her hair bun and she begins struggling with the buttons of his shirt. Pagan quickly grows impatient with her fumbling hands; he pulls back and rips it off over his head, tossing it who-knows-where. His chest bare, he pauses above her, hands balanced on her knees, so that she can stare at the taut muscles of his chest, the vague outline of his abs, the v of his hips. His pinkish-brown nipples are hard in the cool air and he’s grinning like a schoolboy.

“Like what you see?” He asks smugly.

“You’re a show-off,” she accuses him, not wanting to admit, even now, that she does. He’s ludicrous and dresses like a fool, but she cannot stop staring.

Pagan shrugs in agreement and grabs the bottom of her dress, pulling it up over her head to leave her lying beneath him naked but for her socks and her bra, and now it is her turn to watch as he drinks in the sight of her, utterly still, his eyes bright and greedy.

“Take off your bra.” He whispers the order to her, all his cockiness gone and replaced only with a wolfish stare.

Ishwari sits up slowly, not breaking their eye contact, and carefully reaches back to unclasp her bra and shrug it, one strap at a time, off her shoulders. She lets the cups of fabric drop away from her and tosses it to the side. Her breasts are no longer perky and firm as they were before her pregnancy; they are full and weighty and all softness now. Pagan lifts his hands to cup them, circle them with his slender fingers, and she can feel her own nipples harden at the brush of his finger-tips. Pagan presses her back down onto the bed and covers them with caresses and kisses, sucking and kissing fervently at her dark brown nipples and making her gasp and arch up into his touch. It feels so good to be touched like this again, to be caressed by a man who hungers for her touch instead of a baby who wants feeding, and all she can do is wrap her arms about his shoulders and bury her hands in his hair, whispering his name again and again.

Pagan keeps up his work, flicking at the tips of her breasts with his tongue and nipping at them ever-so-gently. His breath is cool on her fevered skin and he slides his tongue down between her breasts, ever downward along her stomach and circling past her navel.

Ishwari squeals in surprise  and nearly slams her legs shut when she feels his mouth between them, his long tongue probing at her entrance. He raises his head and smiles wickedly at her.

“Lay back and close your eyes.”

“But….”

“Lay back. And close your eyes.” It is not a suggestion. Ishwari inhales deeply and squeezes her eyes shut, digging her fingers into the sheets.

It starts with the softest of breaths, a gentle, cool breeze against her sensitive flesh. And then, soft as silk, the wet tip of a tongue tracing a circle up and around and down. She shivers at the ghost of the touch and nearly shrieks again when he flicks his tongue against that aching bud of flesh that’s tingling with need. He does it again, and again, and then slides the flat of his tongue full up against it, rolling it in a circle, before pulling away entirely and returning to tracing his path over her lips.

Pagan continues this pattern, teasing her until she thinks she might go mad, breaking it occasionally to suck at her clit or nibble at the folds of her. Meanwhile, he ventures his tongue within her, each time probing a little deeper, until finally he slides as much of it into her as he can and she cannot help but cry out at the feeling of it swirling inside of her. All the while, he’s making such embarrassing noises himself that she’s blushing with the humiliation of it, sure that the servants downstairs can hear him lapping at her. Soon, though, his noises are drowned out by hers; the moans he’s coaxing out of her are only getting louder and louder and she’s rocking her hips up to meet his mouth, her toes curling.

It’s at this moment that he pulls back completely, leaving only the cool air touching her, and Ishwari lets out a mortifying whine of complaint despite herself. Pagan laughs at her and she opens her eyes to see his mouth and chin are covered with her wetness. He kisses her deeply, pushing what he can of it between her lips with his tongue. He’s still wearing his pants, which strikes Ishwari as incredibly unfair, and she unbuttons and unzips his trousers as they kiss, shoving them and his underwear down by the waistband altogether. Pagan assists her, kicking them off along with his socks, and she pulls back to watch him, overcome with curiosity. She’s only ever seen one grown man fully nude before, and she’s almost surprised to see that there isn’t that much of a difference, except perhaps in shape and color. She feels like she should be blushing at the sight of it, but she regards him calmly, feeling nothing but simple, familiar desire.

Without a word, she spreads her legs for him. Pagan bites his lower lip in a disarmingly sweet way, and positioning himself, grabs his cock to direct it. Ishwari scoots a little closer and reaches around to cup his ass, angling her hips to give him better access.

He sinks into her slowly, easing in the tip and then, inch by inch, the rest of him, until he is sheathed within her and she feels fuller than she has in months, full of someone else, something she didn’t realize she was aching for so badly after Mohan stopped touching her. Now it’s Pagan, Pagan enveloping her and fitting into her so perfectly, this tyrant king who’s caressing her skin with the devotion of a pilgrim at a shrine. She tries to press him closer within her, to bring him deeper in, kissing gently at the hollow of his neck and drinking in the spice of him. He starts making shallow little thrusts, as if hesitant to pull out too far, as if she’ll slip away the moment he does.

The ache he so rudely interrupted is returning now, dull and needful, throbbing to the stroke of his cock within her and the touch of his lips at her breasts and neck and mouth. She caresses him in return and realizes that she’s been whispering his name over and over again.

Finally she can’t take any more of his gentleness; it’s driving her insane. “More,” she tells him. “Harder. Please.”

He complies at once, as if he’d been waiting for her permission to do so. He angles his hips so that he can pull back and then thrust back in hard, driving her down against the mattress. The wet smack of their flesh is echoing off the vaulted ceiling and Ishwari digs her nails into him, trying to raise her hips to meet his every blow. Pagan puts one hand under her ass to support her and, with the other, grabs one of her hands and guides it to her clit. She rubs at it slowly at first, and then harder, stroking herself to each thrust he makes within her. Her legs begin to shake again, and she cries out “Harder!” once more, and in reply he digs his finger bruising-hard into the flesh of her thighs, moving so roughly that the bed is creaking loudly beneath them. All the while, he’s spitting things out in a tangled mess of Cantonese and English, the words dripping with lust even though she can’t understand a single one. His voice grows louder and louder until it rips wide open into a howl of bliss as he buries himself to the hilt within her, his hips jerking erratically. Within moments, the burning point of need beneath Ishwari’s fingers explodes in light and her voice joins his, crying out in unison.

Pagan’s hips jerk a few more times as he empties himself inside her, and once he is done he practically collapses on top of her before rolling over and pulling her snug up against him. She’s gasping from her own orgasm and she remotely feels him slide out of her, his seed dripping out after him. Her sweat is cooling on her flesh and beneath her cheek, she can feel Pagan’s heartbeat slowing and steadying. He says nothing; he just holds her tightly as he slips into a doze. Ishwari listens to the sound of the waterfall outside until it’s all around her and she slips beneath the roar of the water, following Pagan into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! This was a bitch of a chapter to write. I'm definitely not used to writing a first-time couple scenario. Thanks for reading, as always!


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They eat and talk.

Ishwari opens her eyes a short time later, the post-coital exhaustion ghosting away from the corners of her. Pagan’s eyes are still closed, lashes fluttering gently on his cheeks, his breathing slow and even. Carefully, Ishwari extricates herself from his loose embrace and slips out of bed without waking him.

It turns out the upper floor, now that she looks around, is really only separated from the lower level by a railing. Ishwari sighs, resigning herself to the knowledge that yes, everyone had absolutely heard their every cry and moan. The noises had probably bounced right off the vaulted ceiling into the rooms below.

_Well, it can’t be helped now. They already knew why we were here, anyway._

The rest of the loft contains a small seating area with a little vintage record player, as well as a single door, behind which is exactly what she’s looking for. She closes the bathroom door behind her as quietly as she can, deliberating for a moment whether or not to lock it. In the end, she doesn’t. Locking it, if he awakes, will only make him wonder why. She sinks onto the toilet and empties her bladder gratefully, leaning over and balancing her elbows on her knees as she leans her face into her palms. Her whole body is aching, but in a vague, pleasant way, as if after a long, enjoyable walk. She wipes herself with extra care; she’s still covered in sticky wetness down there – both hers and Pagan’s – and for extra measure she uses the bidet, wincing when the cool water hits her flesh.

As she washes her hands, she tries not to look herself in the mirror. She knows full well what she’ll see: a short, flat-faced girl with extra baby-weight, hair as disheveled as a prostitute’s, covered in little love-bites and finger-shaped bruises. He devoured her like a rabid wolf, and the worst part is how much she loved it, how much she’s hoping it will happen again before the night is over. She knows she should have been thinking of someone else in Pagan’s bed, but she wasn’t. She could only see Pagan, and now his scent perfumes her skin, sharp and sweet.

She loves everything about it, and she cannot meet her own eyes in the mirror before her.

Pagan is awake when she comes back out of the bathroom, leaning up against the pillows and smiling at her as he watches her, his head propped up on one hand as his golden hair falls into his eyes.

“I asked them to bring us some food,” he says, gesturing vaguely downstairs. “I hope you’re hungry.”

“Starving. I haven’t really eaten much today.”

He grins. “Same here. I guess we’ve been a little too busy for it.”

Ishwari smiles back and sinks down onto the bed beside him, her feet still on the floor. There is something tangibly different between them now, moreso than after their kiss at the palace, even more than after the time in the car. The burning in his eyes has dimmed, replaced with a look of simple satisfaction. He sits at ease naked before her, unabashed, the residue of their sex drying on his inner thighs and his soft penis. The strangest difference between him and Mohan, really, is the hair. She’s never seen anyone who trims their body hair, but Pagan does, and she can’t help but wonder if this is a foreign thing or just a Pagan thing.

“You’re still wearing your socks,” Pagan teases her.

Ishwari blushes as she realizes how ridiculous she must look, trimmed body hair or not. “My…my feet get cold!”

“Ishwari, those things go up to your knees!”

“Well, my legs get cold too!”

Pagan is laughing even harder now, and Ishwari can’t help but break into a sheepish grin, no matter how much she wants to scowl at him. He wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her across the bed toward him, kissing the top of her head. “I can think of more than a few ways to warm you up again,” he murmurs in her ear, and covers her face with kisses, his fingers tickling playfully along her sides. Ishwari starts laughing and squirming despite herself. She’s always been ticklish, but now she feels dizzy, drunk.

 _Is this what girls feel like with their first boyfriend?_ With Mohan it had been a long, slow road into loving him. She can’t mark the day or the month or even the year she first realized she loved him – she just loved him without realizing it had happened. She’d never felt this sudden rush of euphoria, the wonderful terror of suddenly liking and wanting and _needing_. Here in Pagan’s arms, being tickled mercilessly and giggling like a child, she’s suddenly living out one of those whirlwind romances from the stories she grew up with.

 _It’s not real_ , she reminds herself as she arches into Pagan’s touch as it dances from her ribs to massage her breasts, pressing her head into the curve of his neck. _This will pass, just like all silly little affairs._

Just then, they hear the creak of footsteps on the stairs, and Pagan pulls up a sheet and throws it over Ishwari’s head. “Make yourself decent,” he teases, and she punches him lightly on the arm, pulling the fabric off her head in time to see a pair of servants, carefully neutral smiles on their faces, bring up a couple of trays piled with finger foods and wine.

They set the trays on the table in the little sitting area, but instead of sitting on the couches, Pagan just sits bare-assed on the carpet. Ishwari joins him, and together they begin gorging themselves, both of them famished after a long day with few meals.

The sun is now almost fully set, leaving only a soft bluish light in the cabin. The lights come on downstairs, and one of the servants turns on a few lamps up in the loft, suffusing the place in a soft glow. They don’t even seem to know their own king’s nakedness, nor that of his new bedmate, and Ishwari cannot help but wonder what kind of fear he has instilled in them so that they will not even risk a knowing glance, a twitch of a smile.

She asks him about it later, as they lean against the couch, stuffed with food and wine.

“Don’t they gossip?”

“They know better.”

“Servants always gossip, Pagan. I’ve lived among royals before, remember?”

“How would you know? You weren’t a servant.”

Ishwari smiles. “No, but I was a child, and adults have a funny way of forgetting that children have ears. I could have told you all the dirty laundry of the old royal family.”

Pagan laughs. “Yeah? Like what?”

“Hmm, let me remember. Oh yes, the old king had a hairy back, and always clogged the drains. His cousin, the Lady Anantra, she farted all the time, so badly that her chamber stank. And her husband, he slept with the Lady, but he also brought young men into his bed.”

Pagan snorts. “Oh, _that’s_ hardly unusual.”

“Really?” She looks at him dubiously. Such things are rarely spoken of in Kyrat, and the only times she’s heard of it, it’s been treated as something between eccentricity and sin.

“Sure. I’ve been with men.”

Ishwari feels her cheeks burn at the thought, but curiosity overcomes her. “What…well what’s it like? Between two men?”

Pagan leans his head back, thinking. “Mm. Well, not too different, to tell the truth. Just different body parts involved, really. Still, feels just as good, and that’s what counts.”

“So…how do you…?”

He winks at her and pinches her butt-cheek. Ishwari stares at him, feeling like a naïve child all over again. “It doesn’t hurt?”

“Not if you do it right. If you’re with a man who knows what he’s doing, it feels fucking amazing. I love it, personally.”

“How did start, though? How do you find other men who will?”

Pagan throws back his head and laughs at that. “Ishwari, my father sent me to an all-boys’ private academy in England when I was a teenager.”

“Oh.” Ishwari nods, pretending to understand. She doesn’t.

“Why are you so interested, anyway?”

“I don’t know, it’s just…it’s so different for you. You’ve seen the world and done all sorts of things I’ve barely ever heard of and you just know so much more than I do about everything. Not just sex. Everything.”

Pagan is silent, frowning. He says nothing, but wraps his arm around her and squeezes a little, his expression one of discomfort. “You know,” he says after a while, “I forget you’re Kyrati, sometimes. I just talk to you like you’re from Hong Kong or England or something.”

Now it’s Ishwari’s turn to snort. “That’s hard to believe.”

“It’s true. You don’t _act_ like one of those people.”

Ishwari pulls away so she can look at him in the face. “Yes, I do. You just don’t know any of ‘those people.’”

Pagan’s jaw tightens and he looks away. “Well, okay, maybe, but you can’t deny that you’re different. You’re their goddess, aren’t you?”

“I…yes.” All the weight that had lifted from her shoulders slams back down onto her. She feels her spine bend beneath it.

Pagan watches her, sees her face change, and he lifts his hand to cup her cheek. “Hey. You don’t have to be her with me. Just be Ishwari.”

“That’s not possible, Pagan. I am her incarnation. I cannot separate her from me.”

“Then just pretend you can. Just for a little while. Give yourself a vacation, for heaven’s sake.”

Gods, that offer sounds good. And maybe, just for a little while, it could make things a bit easier. And Pagan makes it so easy to pretend, because there is never any worship in his eyes when he looks at her. He just _looks_.

Ishwari curls back up to his side, her head on his shoulder, and together they watch the last of the sunlight fade from the sky. Later on, they move back to the bed and he enters into her again, a little more tenderly than the first time. As they curl up and go to sleep, their foreheads touching, Ishwari whispers: “Pagan? I want something.”

“Anything,” he replies, his voice heavy with sleep.

“When we get back to the palace, I want my tutor back.”

He kisses her cheek in promise, and she falls asleep smiling.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She discovers something new.

Their long weekend becomes a haze, the days and nights blurring into one another. She and Pagan sleep and wake and have sex, their limbs sluggish and eyes still heavy with drowsiness. When they finally get up to shower off their sticky bodies, it becomes sex again, both of them struggling to keep their footing on the wet bathroom tile as hot water sprays down on them and steam fogs their vision. Their moans reverberate off the tile walls and Pagan spills himself while rubbing between her inner thighs and it washes down the drain with the dirty water.

Their time is devoted to learning each other, exploring every inch of one another’s bodies at their leisure, savoring the new wisdom gained with each touch. They eat and drink as they need, and only occasionally put clothes on (only to take them off again within the hour). They never go down to the dining room; they just eat in bed or in the little sitting area by the bed, or even in front of the big TV downstairs as they watch expensive Hollywood movies that make Ishwari’s jaw drop. They even try to eat in the hot tub, though that meal gets interrupted when she reaches beneath the bubbling water to find Pagan’s cock already hard and waiting.

Ishwari feels almost like a child again, all naked shamelessness and free of worry. The feeling of sin that plagued her is gone; there is only Pagan, and their caresses are as innocent as that of a newlywed couple, and it is as if she is not naked at all. She no longer bothers to try and cover herself when the servants come in. She can no longer even be bothered to care when, at one point, a young woman comes in to clear away the dishes as Pagan has Ishwari writhing in unbridled joy beneath his skilled mouth. This, she realizes, is what true power feels like: freedom from all doubt.

All the while, she learns things she never knew about sex. She’d thought, up to this point, that she’d experienced most of what there was to know, especially after six years of marriage. There was, to her previous knowledge, only a limited number of things one could do in bed, and while all those things were (and are) quite nice, Pagan’s suggestions open her to an entirely new world she’d never imagined. As he does, she begins to discover all the little things that make her new lover tick, all his tender spots and sensitivities. That spot where his ear and jaw and neck meet makes him shudder when she licks it, and he whimpers with ecstasy when she grazes her nails over his nipples.

At one point, in the heat of a passionate embrace, Ishwari suddenly remembers what he said to her earlier about his times with men, and a something wholly original to her makes its way into her mind. She traces her hand down the small of his back and between his cheeks, and, tentatively, presses a finger against and into his rear entrance. The touch itself – the very fact of what she’s doing – excites Pagan so much that he comes right then and there with a yelp of surprise. He rolls off of her onto his back, shrieking with delighted laughter, his whole body shaking with mirth.

Once he’s calmed down a bit (and reassured Ishwari that she certainly did nothing wrong), her boldness inspires him to introduce a variety of entirely new items into the equation.

“What are they?” Ishwari asks, looking down at the assortment of strange, plastic-looking objects he pulls out of his suitcase and arrays on the bed.

“Vibrators. Dildos. All sorts of toys I’ve collected over the past few years.” He winks at her.

“Oh.” Ishwari stares at the strange-looking things, guessing at their uses but not wanting to make any assumptions. There are little tiny metallic things no bigger than her pinky finger with a long string attaching them to a trigger. There’s a series of balls of increasing size all on a string, all glittering with gold, and when she touches them she realizes with a start that it isn’t paint. There’s even a strange, bulbous hunk of purple plastic that reminds her of an ace of spades. The most obvious ones, of course, are those shaped more or less like a man’s penis.

“I was going to save these for later, but I might as well show them to you now.” Pagan winks at her and picks up one – long and bullet-shaped and pink – and twists the end. It springs to life, buzzing and humming in his hand. “This is one of my favorites.”

Ishwari takes it from him and holds it delicately, running her hands along it. It’s softer than she’d expected, but stiff and smooth, and she can only imagine how amazing that whir of the motor must feel.

“Wow,” she whispers. She meets his eyes and he grins, as openly thrilled as a child on his birthday. He plucks the object – a vibrator, she supposes – from her hands and grabs a little bottle from among the stuff he’s pulled out of his bag. Ishwari sits and watches, her eyes wide, as Pagan squeezes something like jelly onto the tip of the vibrator, smoothing it out over the length. That done, he squeezes more onto his fingertips and reaches beneath himself, gently teasing himself before pressing one finger inside, and then another, his eyes lidded with something between effort and enjoyment. Ishwari can only watch, half-awed, half-aghast.

“You wanted to know what it’s like, didn’t you?” He asks breathlessly, his mouth curling into a devious smirk. His eyes are full of lust as he gazes at her.

“I…”

“Here.” He presses the vibrator back into her hands. “Get behind me.”

“What?”

“Scoot around behind me. There you go.”

Pagan shifts forward onto his hands and knees, spreading his legs and arching his ass up, and it’s just so incredibly _lewd_ , but Ishwari feels a thrill shoot down between her legs.

“Slide it in,” he tells her.

Her mouth is dry. She licks her lips, staring at him in that vulnerable pose. “You’re sure…you’re sure it won’t hurt you?”

Pagan smiles at her over his shoulder. “I trust you.”

Ishwari gulps. The words send heat spreading through her core, dampness between her legs. With trembling fingers, she presses the bullet-end of the vibrator to his entrance. It’s slick with lube and the buzzing makes it almost impossible to keep her grip, but she manages somehow. As tenderly as she possibly can, she eases it into him.

Pagan lets out a gasp and a tiny choked, whining moan, and between his legs she sees his cock twitch and begin to harden.

“All the way,” he begs her.

“You’re _certain_ I’m not hurting you?”

“No, no, it feels _fantastic_ , darling. All the way in, now.”

She nods, even though he can’t see her (his head is now burrowed into the sheets), and pushes the vibrator in as far as she can. Pagan pushes his ass back into it, impatient with her lack of speed.

“Good,” he groans. “That’s so good. It’s amazing. Now _fuck_ me with it.”

“ _What_?” Ishwari’s face burns at the filthy way he says it.

“You heard me.”

Ishwari takes a deep breath and shifts into a more comfortable position before carefully pulling the vibrator nearly all the way out and pushing it back in again.

“Dammit, Ishwari, I’ve had cocks in me three times this big and a quarter as gentle. _Fuck_ _me_.”

She fucks him. With one hand on his ass to steady herself, she pumps the vibrator in and out and back in again until her arm begins to tire and she has to switch. Pagan is groaning in ecstasy all the while, his cock rock hard against his belly and smearing a trail of precum on his taut skin. She licks her lips at the sight, surprising herself with the way his almost woman-like moans, his exposed position, excite something deep within her core. She shifts her position again, and as she does, she hits a spot that makes Pagain’s back arch violently.

“ _There_! Oh, _god_ , right there! Do that again!”

She does, and then she does again, and his moans grow louder and louder until he’s shuddering with it, his every limb trembling. The pressure is building between her own legs, just from listening to him cry out, and she keeps up the pace until he gives a harsh, hoarse shout, cum shooting out of him in five long spurts, hitting his chest and his face and the sheets.

With a deep sigh of satisfaction, Pagan crumbles onto the sheets, limp and shaky as he rolls onto his back, the still-humming toy slipping from him in a coating of lubricant. His lips turn up in a sly little smile, and he scoops a glob of cum from his cheek and presses it into Ishwari’s mouth with his thumb. Ishwari closes her eyes and swirls her tongue around it, swallowing the salty fluid. It doesn’t taste quite as bad as she’d expected, though it’s still strange. Still, how can she refuse him in such a delicate moment as this? After the position he’s been in with her?

“That was incredible,” he whispers, “thank you.”

Ishwari opens her eyes again to see real gratitude shining from his face. Real trust. Something about it makes her heart swell and, moved by the sincerity in his face, she leans down and licks the rest of the whiteness from his chest and face, caressing him gently as she does. His fingers thread through her hair and he murmurs her name, and when she looks up, she sees that he is truly touched by all this, his eyes full of amazement and appreciation and joy. He draws her up to kiss him and she opens her mouth, sharing the taste of him with his swirling tongue.

“No woman has ever done that to me before,” he whispers in confession to her as she rests her cheek on his chest, and something about the tenor of his voice, the little tremor of emotion beneath it, lets her know he’s being sincere.

“Thank you for letting me,” she replies, and realizes as soon as the words leave her mouth that she means it. She has always been the one on her back, fingers and tongues and cocks pressed into her, and as unfamiliar as it is, someone else’s vulnerability, someone else’s willingness to be entered-into…it makes her happier than she could have anticipated.

“We’re going home tomorrow morning,” he murmurs.

“So soon?”

“We’ve been here a whole extra day, you know. It’s Monday. I was supposed to be back by now. Yuma will be furious with me.”

“Well, I hope it’s been worth it.”

Pagan chuckles. “Are you kidding? She’ll have to work doubly hard if she wants to make me regret this.”

Ishwari laughs but then pinches him as she notices him nodding off. “Hey now. You’ve forgotten me.”

“Oh, yes.” He stretches and sits up. “I’ve had my way twice and made you hold out, haven’t I? Poor thing. Well, choose your weapon.” He gestures to the unused toys sitting at the end of the bed.

Ishwari can’t help but grin, and she takes her time choosing how he’s going to reciprocate.


End file.
